Cret

Ahh ok - guess I'm just plain wrong about that then, thanks for clarifying! Never realised the resolution was really so low on the PS2!!! I'll definitely decrease settings and try it in view of that. Is there even a benefit to higher resolution settings if the actual source pixels (so to speak) don't even exist anyway? Aside from resolution, what sort of graphics related settings would benefit a low power card like the N210 I've got? I'm afraid while I do know about computers in general I know nothing really about graphics/cards/settings for them as my gaming has always been console based and not on the PC. Apologies if this is a thread hijack by the way - it's not my intention!!

It's possible I suppose, but the stuff I've read about this emulator suggests that the Video card is of minor importance and the work is mainly done by the CPU. I might be wrong but that's what I'd read about PCSX2, and certainly when I was using the E6600 I'd see the CPU maxed out at 100% in task manager when trying some PS2 games like Tekken4 and GT4. The card I've got is an Msi N210 for what it's worth - it's pretty cheap but I've never had need for anything more (so far). Thanks - I've seen a lot written about Xpadder, but not tried it myself as I haven't been sure if it's anything I actually need as such. Might be worth a try. I presume it effectively does the same as the Logitech software that lets you set up profiles per game, but allowing inputs for any control rather than just the logitech ones? It sounds very versatile.

Hi guys - just a quick note that I have the EXACT same problem and wheel/pedal set! It's the PS2 control set but I had to guess which software to get from logitech as there isn't any search result for the PS2 wheel. I've found that setting the controls in windows joypad settings (run joy.cpl) to 'combined' mode makes it work best in Mame/GameEx, but it doesn't seem to work as well as it ought to in PC driving games. I think unfortunately whatever way you set it there will be a compromise somewhere in the equation. If you figure out a 'perfect solution' by all means let me know, and vice versa. Speaking of driving games, I upgraded my arcade pc first from a P4 3ghz to a core2duo E6600, and now to an i7 2600K and it STILL won't play GT4 on the PCSX2 emulator. It drops to 30-40fps as soon as the race is about to begin which is ridiculous. I know people get this game to run ok, and it's not even really taxing the CPU so any ideas on what the problem might be? I wasn't going to all this processing expense originally, but after a while I figured that my arcade that already had wheel & pedals would be the perfect thing for playing drivers on, so why not get it up to speed for installing PC driver games and PS2 ones etc.

That's great - many thanks for the tips. Will do the update and see what's different etc. It'll be a trial run for getting new hardware and hopefully sorting out a neater installation as I've got duplicated files & folders all over the place at the moment and it doesn't make things any easier!!

Thanks for the tip re' the gameEx version - I never even thought to look at that, but I realise now that it was ages ago when I initially installed and unlocked it. Since then the machine has been used for the occasional mariokart showdown with my mate, but not had time to really give it attention as such. Do I need to do a clean install to upgrade to the new version and to pay again? I'd guess that I can't just update it as such but will have a look tonight if I get a chance. Fresh install is fine if need be since I'm going to be building a new machine for it to run on, to give it a lot more power. Will have to read up on whether everything will work on windows 7 or if it needs to be XP still. Re' the fault I was having, I didn't actually have other controllers plugged in as such at the time. It was a double N64 controller adaptor, and a pair of PSX controller adaptors that were the culprit. I assume one just wasn't properly seated and was confusing the USB signals somehow.

SUCCESS!! I went round the machine again, double checking everything, and realised there was still a USB hub connected which supplies all the connections for various console joypads. Unplugged the USB feed to it from the motherboard and hey presto, everything is behaving just fine. So the question for me now, is "Why was that USB hub causing a problem when it was previously ok?". Am wondering if I've connected an additional USB item and it's one too many perhaps? *Edit* Ok, I removed everything from the hub and made sure it was ok itself, then one by one plugged all the adaptors back in and tested with a 'bad' game each time. They're all back in now, and it works fine, so I can only assume one of them wasn't connected quite right and was confusing things. Not sure why it only affected some games though.

I've tried more games now in case this in any way helps (like if there's something that distinguishes working ones from ones that don't work). Working ok: Double Dragon Peacekeepers Mr Do Pacman Not working (controls behave as if joystick is jammed in a set direction): Darius Darius2 Afterburner Gloc Crime Fighter I'll continue testing this for now, but hopefully someone can pick up on a blunder that might cause this. Another observation I have made is that when pressing tab to open the menu in game, the up/down controls (whether cursor or joystick) function fine in working games, but in the faulty games, the menu controls (in game - NOT the GameEx menus) only go down and not up. Additionally, I have already tried limiting the controls plugged in to just a single input source, and then varied this but I get the same thing on them all.

Thanks for the reply Draco I've attached them as requested. I've noticed that it doesn't do this fault on all games for some reason. Example: I started Double Dragon just now and it controlled perfectly. No problem with stick movement in any direction. Similar style game and different behaviour - Crime Fighter, my character runs straight to the top of the screen and cannot be controlled. I played Darius and the spaceship automatically went to the top of the screen. Pulling the stick downmost had the effect of centering the stick normally would do. In Afterburner, the plane automatically pulls down to the bottom of the screen and won't do anything else no matter what I do with the stick. In the past, all these games had worked fine. I must have changed something but I can't figure what. *Edit* for what it's worth, when i launch virtua keyboard and test all the joystick & butons, they all work perfectly to the corresponding key on screen, so I don't believe this is any sort of fault with the controller interface, but a settings based issue somehow. I'd expect the virtua keyboard to be acting crazy if for instance it thought a control was being leant on, which is the effect that I basically get in the games. I'd have guessed it was in the 'controls general' settings that TAB opens up in each game, but then double dragon would be doing the same. What I also noticed was that in afterburner when I opened the control menu to check/set them if necessary, the stick initially is fine moving up & down the menu, but then something happens that makes it only go down in the menu. The same apples to the cursor keys on my keyboard. Really scratching my head here but I bet it's something simple ultimately! Many thanks for any suggestions. log.txt GameEx.ini

Hi guys - it's been a very long time since I could put any time into my cabinet due to kids and other commitments etc but I decided to begin meddling with it today again. Now for the most part things worked fine in the past, but something weird is going on with the controls when I launch any roms. In the GameEx menus, all directions of the joystick (P1) work fine to navigate, but when launching any of the roms they behave as if the stick is jammed in one specific direction, and moving the stick makes no difference. I'm confused as to what I might have done since I've not changed anything I don't think, but it's a long time. Any suggestions? The hardware is hooked up through a PC Arcade controller mk2. All connections & wiring seems to be secure and I've tried unplugging/plugging most things just in case, to no avail. Sure this must be something really simple and dumb that I've done, but can't think why it's doing this offhand, so all suggestions are appreciated, thanks! Jim

YAY!! I found a solution/workaround for this. After googling on the windows keys, most of the results I was finding were basically just pointing to the same registry hack that I already had. Not suitable as I already have discovered. But then I found a page that linked to an app called Sharpkeys. It's a free executable that allows you to very quickly and easily remap any key to any other one. I was a bit skeptical as to whether this would give the desired outcome as I had a suspicion it would work at a different level to what I required. I mapped the "," and "." keys to the left & right Win keys and then rebooted. Fired up Gamex, and straight away, the buttons are working fine and with no pesky windows start menus appearing. Superb! This is great and finally I can get my mate round to give him a real ass kicking on SF2 turbo (Snes), since we had to cancel for last night as my wife was ill. Thanks once again for all the assistance on this thread - I appreciate the efforts/patience. Hope this info proves useful to someone else in future as well. I hope this is ok but apologies if not. This is the link to the page where I found this app. I've got no affiliation with anyone linked to this, just stumbled on it and found it solved my problem very nicely. And it's free. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/map-any-key-to-any-key-on-windows-xp-vista/ Cheers Jim

Hmmm, moving swiftly on.... This could be a problem I think. I did as you suggested and undid the registry tweak that comes with this controller circuit. After a reboot to enforce the registry change, P1 & P2 Button 6 begin to work again, but sure enough the Windows start menu pops up and it effectively Alt+Tabs at the same time to the 'hidden' desktop (if that makes any sense). So with the registry hack in force the emulators themselves work fine with these keys working, but Gamex appears to sort of disable them in some way. But without the hack, the keys work both in the emulators directly, and through Gamex, but can't actually be used because of the 'side effects' of the windows menus and alt tab effect. Is there anything you know of within Gamex that can help me get around this, or perhaps some other means of removing the normal function of these keys without the hack but so they will still work in gamex? I've got a nasty suspicion that this is going to be trouble to get around, but as before, I'd take pleasure in being proven wrong (and it's not often people hear me say that).

You sir, are a legend! It was that setting after all, but the reason I had said it wasn't when I looked previously is that I was looking at the wrong set of key codes, so it appeared that it was a different key! I think I got the details from a file called scan codes or something similar, where it had a code of 11 for the zero key, and I'd been searching either for a zero or an eleven in all the settings, but it turns out the code is actually 48, and that's exactly what was in there. I feel a bit stupid since I had checked this setting and was sure it was not the cause since the values were not what I expected, but I'm glad that it was indeed (as I said it would be) just a setup issue not a bug as such. Really appreciate the assistance. I do have another slight issue though which is that two of my keys are the left & right Win keys (codes 91 & 92). These again are hardwired to my control circuit and can't be changed. I had to run a registry hack to disable the actual windows menus functions for these when I started using the game controller (as per its instructions), and I don't know if this is related to that registry change possibly? Basically these two controls work fine outside Gamex in the emus themselves, but appear to simply not function through Gamex. I know this is cheeky when I've already got the result to this first problem but would you happen to know offhand why this might be, or suggest a likely cause? I intend to get searching through the setup stuff again to look for these values, but it seems odd that if they're used somewhere that it's not invoking a gamex function and also isn't working in game, UNLESS they're used as some sort of disabled keys or something? Anyway, thanks mate, and if you DO have a 69 mustang you're a lucky sod!

Don't worry about asking me things like that - I'd rather someone ask me something than it potentially get overlooked! I'm pretty sure I did actually check that by opening a text file and using the joystick to add some zeros but in all honesty I might not have actually ended up doing it after all, having spent so long trying different things to fix it. Will double check tonight. From what I can recall it did show a zero in the zsnes setup/input screen so I'm pretty sure it is doing what it should. I know it's a separate point really, but even if it wasn't outputting a zero it's kind of beside the point as it would be avoiding the cause of the problem, ie what exactly is it that it's triggering? Don't take that the wrong way though, I'm just thinking logically rather than being 'funny'!!! I can't change the keymapping as I use this controller called a PC Arcade Controller II as sold on ebay, which is an all in one thing with wiring harness that connects to keyboard PS2 port. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PC-Arcade-Controller-MK-2-MAME-Cab-/230542328619?pt=UK_Video_Games_Coin_Operated_MJ&hash=item35ad64c32b I have previously asked the guy that makes them about the keymapping and he says it can't be changed due to issues with ghosting etc I think. I was going to email Tom Speirs and ask him if he knew of a setting that could cause this since I'm certain it is indeed a setup issue rather than a bug. The contact page says not to though so I'm stuffed it seems. I can understand that since I run a busy forum myself and have to spend a lot of my free time answering user questions that shouldn't be sent to me, eg it's a car forum and instead of questions about the forum itself I get questions about whether a particular part will fit a particular car etc (and I'd hate to be guilty of daft questions like that myself!). Bit upsetting though after I bought the software key and now it looks like I just basically can't use Gamex without finding out the issue here. Am at my wit's end after spending hours looking through setup files/menus, and reinstalling etc. Appreciate the suggestions so far on this thread anyway.

Well, I've tried for a couple of nights to build a new PC for the cabinet in order to sort this out (ie the S3 problem and the P2 Joystick thing). No luck - the two half decent socket 478 boards I have spare arent playing ball, one has no video output after trying all sorts of stuff (different cards, different memory, clearing cmos etc), the other gets part way through an XP install and then blue screens on me. Never before in 20 odd years of computers experience have I had this much grief trying to sort a couple of simple issues (except maybe when I was using Windows ME!! ). I removed all traces of gamex tonight from my non S3ing setup tonight, downloaded it again and decided to install from scratch. And guess what, this bloody P2 joy down problem is still there, yet I know I've had at least two times when I installed it when this hasn't happened. I just can't find the fault and it's driving me crazy. My best mate is coming round on Saturday for a drinking and arcade session before his wedding in 2 weeks, and I won't be able to play him because of this. If anyone has ideas on this Gamex menu that's being activated then now would really be a great time to suggest it. Appreciate all the suggestions so far anyway. Thanks guys!

Nah, that's set to 'No'. Not sure if I actually have a working back button at the moment as I tend to use Esc for most things. It's not ideal obviously!