WinIPAC IPD replaces the
older WinIPAC program. It's primary function is to tell the I-PAC and J-PAC
boards which keyboard character(s) to send to the PC for each button or
joystick on the control panel. You configure this information using this
program and then download the settings to the I-PAC board, where they are held
in EEPROM even after power off.
This program can only be used on boards
that were shipped with this sotware on the accompanying CD (Jan 15th 2004
onwards). An upgrade is
available for older boards. Check the upgrade page for details of how to
determine your board version.
You can also tell the program to download
various keycode settings to the board on-the-fly if you often run PC programs
that need different panel configurations. All of this programmable
functionality is entirely optional on the I-PAC range. If you leave the I-PAC
set to MAME defaults (which most people prefer to do until they have built and
tested their panel) you don't need to use this program. But that would be
missing the fun!
So what is different about this program from all other
existing keyboard encoder configuration software? The answer is this: If you
think about the processes you go through to build a panel, the first thing you
do is assemble the panel, then you wire all of the switches into the keyboard
encoder. Then you might want to configure the encoder to send specific keycodes
for each switch. Before WinIPAC IPD, you would have to refer to a note of how
you have wired the panel, for example if you wanted to have a dedicated "quit"
button for MAME, you would need to remember, for example, you have wired a
button into the Player1 Switch 8 input, and this needs to be set to the keycode
for the "esc" key. With WinIPAC IPD, the program already knows which button you
have wired to this input, and where it is physically located on the panel, and
you can simply click on this button and assign the code. What's more, you can
tell WinIPAC IPD that this is a "quit" button, by entering text, and it will
remember this and display the text on a picture of the panel.
So WinIPAC
IPD defines the steps in creating a panel as these: (all of which are optional)
Once only (unless you have multiple panels):
Step 1)
Create a pictorial view of your panel design
Step 2) Tell the program
how you have wired it to the interface
Step 3) Save the
panel.
Then as many times as you need:
Step 1) Assign
keycodes by clicking on each control
Step 2) Optionally assign display
text to each control
Step 3) Save configuration
Step 4)
Associate a configuration with an application in the separate Launcher program
or in the MAMEWAH front end.
Other
features:
Macros:
You can assign macros to any
button. These are cumulative, each key is pressed and held, so you can program,
for example, CTRL/ALT/DEL to one button.
On-Screen Keyboard Launcher:
Brings up a keyboard layout on the screen so you can configure using
only a mouse or trackball.
Application Launcher:
Start a
separate program which can be used to assign keycode files to any application
and launch the app, having sent the file to the I-PAC board. As well as the
Ultimarc Launcher, the MAMEWAH front end can do this. The Ultimarc Launcher
will shortly be downloadable from this site.
Test Mode:
Use
this to check operation of all buttons and switches.
Download to RAM
instead of EEPROM (command line function):
This feature will be enabled
in the next release. The feature is already implemented in the I-PAC
chip.
This enables the codeset to be stored in temporary storage on the
I-PAC board instead of permanent storage.
Temporary reset to MAME
defaults (command-line function):
This feature will be enabled in the
next release. The feature is already implemented in the I-PAC chip.
You can
tell the board to copy it's fixed MAME codeset into RAM temporary
storage.
Installation:
Ensure you have
Direct-X ver 8.0 or later installed.
The Ultimarc CD has an auto-run menu
which has an entry for installing WinIPAC IPD. Or, navigate to the setup.exe
program in the WinIPAC folder. Depending on which fonts you have installed
already on your system, you may need to re-boot for the table view to display
properly.
Note this program is not compatible with PS/2 keyboard/mouse
dual-usage ports as found on laptops.
Using the
program:
WinIPAC IPD is really two programs in one. So these
will be covered separately.
The first time you start the program, a menu
will appear. This will ask you whether you want to use a default panel layout
or not. The two choices are:
"Use Default" This skips all of the
panel layout tools and goes straight into a table view which allows you to
assign keycodes to the I-PAC inputs. This mimics the operation of the older
WinIPAC program and is useful for quickly setting up your board when you know
how the panel is wired and you don't intend to change it in the future.
"Customize Panel" This choice is much more fun! You will enter the first
of the two sections of the program, Panel Design Mode, below.
Panel Design Mode:
This is the first program of the two sections
that make up WinIPAC IPD. Normally you would enter this mode only once, when
you build and wire a panel. The only time you may want to go through this more
than once is if you have multiple panels. This is what you can do from this
screen:
Design your panel.
The box in the top
left corner contains a selection of different control types, selectable by
using the left/right arrows. Choose a control, select a colour, then drag it
onto the panel area on the right. Repeat this until the correct number and type
of controls have been added. Then you can move and arrange the controls on the
panel into an approximation of your actual panel layout. You can add more
controls or remove them by dragging off the panel. You can change the colour of
existing controls by clicking on it and clicking on a colour box on the
left.
"Wire up" the panel.
Now you can tell
WinIPAC IPD how you have wired each switch to the I-PAC board. Keep in mind
that we are thinking about actual I-PAC connections here, as marked on the
board, not keycodes or anything related to any application program. For each
switch, look at which input it's connected to, then click on the switch, click
on the Player (1,2,3,4) and click underneath on the switch number. For example
if the I-PAC input is marked 1 DOWN, click on "P1", the "DOWN".
Save the panel.
You can save the panel layout and wiring
information into a "CPL" file and give it a name. WinIPAC IPD keeps a running
copy of the panel layout so this is only really necessary if you have multiple
panels.
Now you are done configuring the actual panel layout and
wiring, you can forget about how you wired everything as it's all remembered by
the program. You can now assign keycodes.
Keycode Mode.
The
program will actually start in this mode normally, unless you have not yet
configured a panel as described already. This mode allows you to configure the
assignment of keyboard characters sent for every button and switch on your
panel. This is something you might want to do more than once, because you might
have many PC applications, emulators or other apps, which need different code
configurations.
There are two ways to assign a keycode to each I-PAC
input.
Table View:
This is similar to the old WinIPAC program. You can
assign a keyboard code to each I-PAC input. You need to know how your panel is
wired up. To assign, click on the input required, then press a key. Further
options such as Macros are available by right-clicking on the input.
Panel View:
This is much cleverer than table view. As you have
already created a panel (see "panel design mode") the program knows what your
panel looks like and how it's wired up. So you can simply click on a button on
the picture of the panel and assign a keycode to it! The program looks at it's
records (actually the current CPL file) to see which I-PAC input you mean, so
you don't need to know this! Just click on a button and press a key.
Right-clicking gives more options such as macros.
Text View:
If you select this view, you can enter text
against a button, and it's saved in the current layout file (IPC file) not sent
to the I-PAC at all. Why would you want to do this? Well, think about it, let's
say you have a flight simulator. When you load the correct IPC file, you don't
have to remember that the middle button on the top row is "start engines",
because you can type this into the panel layout and it will be remembered and
displayed! Who wants to have to remember that "ctrl-S" is start engines? You
don't have to.
The Launcher program can be used to start this type of PC
application and automatically load the correct IPC file so the panel is
displayed and configured correctly. You can save the current IPC file and give
it a name, which could be the same name as the related application, but with an
IPC extension. Even if you forget to save, the program keeps a running copy of
the current configuration.
Other Functions:
The three icons on the top of the window
are:
Test mode:
For testing that every button and
switch gives the correct keycode.
On-Screen Keyboard:
For launching on-screen keyboard (Windows XP and 2000 only)
Help:
Opens the current help screen.
Launcher:
This button simply starts a program
installed in the WinIPAC folder, called "launcher.exe". The Ultimarc Launcher
program would normally be installed here, but you could install (and rename)
any other program such as a front end.
Reverse-lookup:
In table view, if you press any keyboard key or panel button, any input which
is assigned to this key will be highlighted in
green.
Understanding the I-PAC shift feature.
The
I-PAC has a feature which allows you to select one button to be a shift button.
This is normally "start1" but can be any button. You will want to limit the
choice to buttons that are not used intensively during gameplay though. This
button can still retain it's normal use as well as being shift, or you can have
a dedicated button just for shift. Pressing and holding this button invokes a
different set of keycodes for all of the other buttons. These are normally used
for control functions such as quit, coin, etc. That way you don't need special
buttons for these functions and can retain the arcade-authenticity of your
panel (have you ever seen a real arcade machine with a coin insert button on
the panel!!??)
There is more in-depth information on how the shift function
works
here.
Running from the command line.
You can
run WinIPAC IPD from a command line giving an "invisible" way to download a
specific keycode configuration to the I-PAC board. Just enter "WinIPAC nnn.IPC"
where the correct IPC file is specified. This is how the Launcher program and
MAMEWAH drives WinIPAC.
You can optionally tell WinIPAC IPD to leave a
picture of the panel on the screen with user text which you have assigned to
each control, by using the /t switch, ie "WinIPAC nnn.IPC /t"
Conclusion.
We hope you have fun
with this program! Please report any bugs or suggestions to andy@ultimarc.com.
Also, anything we have missed from this documentation!
