MAME without keyboard

Hi!
I’m using retropie with my saitek gamepad. It works great with (s)nes, gameboy, megadrive… Now I want to use it also with MAME, but it seems not to be recognized. I read that I need to press “Tab” to configure the gamepad, but I don’t own a usb keyboard. Is there a way via ssh and a config file to use my gamepad?
thanks in advance