Posted by Tristan Gilder on 4, 2000 at 7:59 PM:
In Reply to: Disgruntled-Controller Design posted by FiZZLeRoM on 4, 2000 at 12:25 AM:
It doesn't sound like you do this sort of thing very often. DIY electronics projects often involve overcoming tricky problems (in this case the interfacing) and finding obscure parts (4 way sticks, trackballs, etc). Its half the fun of it.
My particular 'route' through the interfacing problem was to poke around for old keyboards - eventualy I found an old 80 key aktor from a 186. The microcontroller in the encoder circuit wasn't programmed to block key rollovers, and diodes are built in to prevent ghosting (now replaced by the cheap software blocking solution). And yes, it works as the theory would suggest. No blocking, no ghosting, no masking. Not *perfect* as its only 80 key, but, all those inputs do work simultaneously. Took me a few days research to know what I wanted, but it was worth it and I learned something along the way.
My other minor barrier was finding a suitable trackball - again, the prospects didn't look great, both the authentic arcade ones and the realy nice heavy industrial panel-mounted ones are too expensive for me. Your typical cheapo store trackball is light and poorly built. However I found a good quality 2 1/4" PC trackball unit in good condition on ebay for only $15.
It realy is worth it in the end, and its fun. You just have to accept that the solutions aren't going magic themselves into your hands.