'Fire' button has stopped working

[GoTheBunnies]

Hi guys - slightly odd problem I would appreciate some help with please....

It's been a while since I configured my machine, and it's been absolutely faultless for the past few years (that said, I haven't upgraded the GameEx version for a few years either).

My 'fire' button has suddenly stopped working on Players 1 and 2. I've configured the 'C' key to fire for Player 1, and the same key is also used a my 'Select' key, so when I'm screening through game lists I effectively use the fire button to select games etc. It works fine then, so I know my connection to the Ipac is ok, but inside a game itself the button doesn't do anything. Appears to be the case on both Mame and non-mame emulators.

Any thoughts as to what this may be?

Thanks

[GoTheBunnies]

I sorted this problem, but still have no idea how it happened so would appreciate any insights........

I checked if the fire button worked outside of GameEx ie in Mame itself, and sure enough it didn't. So I checked the Mame Configs, and many of the inputs had changed. So 'C' for example was no longer Player One, Button One. Changed the config back to the original settings and everything is fine.

Weird thing is....I'm running 2 machines, and the same thing happened on the other machine as well. Exactly the same issue. Anyone had problems with goblins changing their Mame configs before?

Separate question....I'm running GameEx version 12.84....I've been scared to update for fear of messing with a system that I'm happy with. Any comments?

[DazzleHP]

This has happened to be me before, outside of GameEx aswell as in. I think it's a MAME bug tbh but i haven't looked too much into it as it's an easy fix to just reconfigure your controls through the General Input menu in MAME. I usually make all my config files Read Only in MAME\cfg to make sure it doesn't happen.

[hansolo77]

Or make a backup copy you can swap back into place if it ever happens to get overwritten.. I've noticed with my setup, that if I start the computer without my gamepad plugged in, MAME will default to a control scheme that doesn't use it. When that happens, I have to manually go back through and re-map everything for the gamepad to work. It's such a major hassle, that anymore I just keep it plugged in all the time to avoid it. It's possible something like that happened in your case as well (something got unplugged or something) that caused the MAME settings to default to their "failsafe" controls.

[GoTheBunnies]

The backup file is a good idea actually - do you know what the name of the Mame config file is? There's a file called config (which I assumed would be it), but the date of that file didn't update when I made the changes, so I'm wondering if that's the one?

[hansolo77]

I just looked in my own folders... I believe the file is called "default.cfg" located inside the /cfg folder.

[GoTheBunnies]

Great work, thanks Hans - found the file and made a backup.

Cheers