Re: Combining keyboard and joystick hacks


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Posted by Just Michael on 3, 2000 at 2:46 PM:

In Reply to: Combining keyboard and joystick hacks posted by Mario D'Alessio on 3, 2000 at 1:18 PM:

: I've read numerous times that people are concerned that
: hacking a keyboard for use with arcade controls is
: not the best way to go due to the limited number of
: individual keys available after taking into account
: the problems of matrices, ghosting, etc. I've read
: that most keyboards only allow for about 16 keys
: without worrying about these problems.

: Other people hack joysticks to avoid this problem, or
: just go and buy the keyboard encoders produced by
: Hagstrom, Andy (IPAC), etc.

: To me, a simple and cheap solution is to hack
: a standard PC gamepad, such as the Gravis gamepad, to
: get two joysticks and 4 buttons working from the
: PC's joystick port, and then use a keyboard hack
: to get the 16 individual keys. In total, this should
: provide for almost all the MAME controls desired
: (excluding trackballs and spinners, of course).

: In other words, combine the concepts of joystick
: and keyboard hacking so that one overcomes the
: limitations of the other.

: I have yet to read about anyone who's done this.
: It seems to me that people either go the keyboard
: route or the joystick route, or ignore both and go
: the purchased encoder route.

: Am I the only one who thought of this? Or am I just
: missing the discussions/webpages of those who already
: did this?

: Since I'm currently not a MAME user, would MAME have
: any problems if I implement this?

I do not know if Mame would handle it correctly or not but the problem with the gameport is the amount of cpu time it eats up just to read it with normal analog joysticks. The computer literally comes to a stop and times the joystick axises figure out where they are at currently. The farther away from 0 an axis is the longer it takes to figure out where it is.


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