Okay, so i've given up on fixing Kawaks for the moment (if anyone gets any ideas reply in this threadhere).
I've now turned my attention to Zinc, which i had never really figured out on
my old computer. The use of some new BIOS files has it running perfectly, but i am having input problems.

I'm using the Zinc v. 1.1 with the Aldo's Tools v2 frontend, which contains something called the Winterblast 1.5 Input Plugin. This seems to set up default configurations for only Capcom and Namco titles. I cannot modify the controller config and therefore cannot play G-Darius, Raystorm or Dead or Alive, which run on Tecmo and Taito bios files repectively, because the plugin contains no way to manipulate the config.

Can anyone direct me either to a better input plugin or some way to manually setup my controllers so i can play these titles?

when all else fails, joy2key

with this utility you map keys to your controller

Does that work on Windows? It looks like a Linux thing.

yes, it works with windows

Download Winterblaster's 1.6 plugin from somewhere instead, it fixes a number of issues. The problems you experience will get fixed once you update that plugin. There are no other controller plugins for ZiNc, other than the default keyboard plugin.

Thanks a lot agozer, works great now. I'm kicking myself for not picking up on Zinc earlier...

What? You've never used ZiNc until now? Wow.