Posted by Ohso on 20, 2000 at 3:52 PM:
In Reply to: There are such drivers... posted by RoarCade on 20, 2000 at 7:52 AM:
Keystroke emulation is a bad way to do it because that is what causes the tracking speed problem.
Keystrokes are digital and don't allow for different velocities.
I'm sure a windows driver could be done to simply read the serial port and treat the trackball just as joystick spinners would be handled.
Windows drivers have been written for parallel port controllers as well as USB, etc. Serial should not be difficult for someone who knows what they are doing. Unfortunately I don't. :(
: There are such drivers, at least for DOS. I tried using one to make Tempest 2000 (The DOS port without the analog support) work with my spinner.
: Problem:: Tracking is slow. Even at its fastest, none of them seem to handle fast movement. Most use a static movement to keystroke translation.
: I'm not sure if it can be adequately done.
: : I've thought about this before, but I think it would be easier if someone could write a windows "Game Device" driver for a trackball connected to a serial port. Instead of treating it as a mouse, it would be a game device like a joystick and recognized by MAME32 automatically.