Mame controller help

[darrenmarchand]

Hi guys,

 

I have a homemade arcade stick setup with 3 joysticks and multiple buttons. Things were working fine but recently I had to move the computer and I powered off the usb hub that the controllers were plugged into. I was using the "read only" method in the .cfg folder  so Mame remembered my controller setup. When I booted up and tried launching Mame, it crashed and I discovered that something in the .cfg folder was now causing the crash (so, something happened when I unplugged powered off the hub for the arcade stick). I deleted the folder and tried creating a new .cfg by launching a game and setting up the controls, but now I get this (see photo). As you can see, when I try to assign a joystick movement, it populates with a TON of buttons and won't let me enter any controllers. I had this problem once before and (stupid me) I didn't write down the solution. Please HELP!

 

Fyi, the sticks and buttons are all detected in Windows 11, I'm getting no errors for the USB controllers in Device Manager and this was working just prior to shutting off the usb hub.

A couple notes:

-if i unplug my arcade box from the usb and try to launch mame, I get constant flickering and the menus jump

-if I try to use my previous default.cfg from when everything was working, Mame crashes

-I've tried using a different usb port and I get the same problem

-I've tried a fresh install of Mame - same problem

[darrenmarchand]

On 9/1/2025 at 11:22 AM, darrenmarchand said:

Hi guys,

 

I have a homemade arcade stick setup with 3 joysticks and multiple buttons. Things were working fine but recently I had to move the computer and I powered off the usb hub that the controllers were plugged into. I was using the "read only" method in the .cfg folder  so Mame remembered my controller setup. When I booted up and tried launching Mame, it crashed and I discovered that something in the .cfg folder was now causing the crash (so, something happened when I unplugged powered off the hub for the arcade stick). I deleted the folder and tried creating a new .cfg by launching a game and setting up the controls, but now I get this (see photo). As you can see, when I try to assign a joystick movement, it populates with a TON of buttons and won't let me enter any controllers. I had this problem once before and (stupid me) I didn't write down the solution. Please HELP!

 

Fyi, the sticks and buttons are all detected in Windows 11, I'm getting no errors for the USB controllers in Device Manager and this was working just prior to shutting off the usb hub.

A couple notes:

-if i unplug my arcade box from the usb and try to launch mame, I get constant flickering and the menus jump

-if I try to use my previous default.cfg from when everything was working, Mame crashes

-I've tried using a different usb port and I get the same problem

-I've tried a fresh install of Mame - same problem

UPDATE - I have 3 joysticks. 2 generic and 1 Tron. Without doing any configuration, Mame is using the Tron stick and buttons (for some strange reason). If I unplug Tron, launch a game and hit Tab, the menu just keeps flickering and I can't get into it! So what the hell?

 

[darrenmarchand]

I sort of figured it out! It's working properly now and it was 1 of 2 things. I checked device manager and there were 2 unknown devices, so I disabled them. Also, there were 3 keyboards showing, so I disabled the 2 that I didn't recognize. Voila! I can program my controllers again. Not sure which one was the issue and I'm not going to mess around with it.

[darrenmarchand]

Well, it's happening again. The 2 unknown devices were there again, so I uninstalled them. The Mame problem persists. The 3 keyboards showed up again, I tried deleting 2 except this time, it did not solve the issue in mame. I have no idea what's going on. There's something Mame does not like with Windows 11, and I can't figure it out.