MAMEWorld Forums - Hardware - Re: Upgrade for HotRod?

In case anyone is interested...

I ended up going with the IPAC-2 VE. Installing was pretty straightforward. The HotRod had three connectors for everything. I just snipped the wires at each connector, stripped the ends, and wired them to the screw terminals on the IPAC. Nothing was labeled on the HotRod, but the color coding of the wires was decent, so it was a pretty straightforward process to get it wired up right.

The only bummer with the IPAC is that the USB connector is on the end of the board, so you can't just screw it in where the original board was. I ended up putting it in the center of the panel, where there's some room between the Player 1 and Player 2 controls. At the moment, I have the included USB cable running right out the hole in the back and to the PC. Eventually, I'll get a wire with a female USB-B on a plate to Mini-USB, and mount the plate on the back so I have a proper external connection.

There are a few quirks with the IPAC VE. The WinIPAC configuration software doesn't recognize the board, which doesn't matter much since the VE doesn't retain any custom configs after power down anyway. One of the drivers also appears in Device Manager with a yellow ! and an error message. I haven't been able to resolve that, but everything works perfectly in MAME, so I haven't spent much time on it.

All in all, a very worthwhile upgrade, especially with PS/2 ports becoming increasingly rare and poorly implemented.