Posted by Rockin' G on 2, 2001 at 1:36 PM:
I recently finished the control panel for my scratch-built upright MAME cabinet... it includes a Fultra Spinner and a Happ 3" trackball interfaced via the Hagstrom ME4 mouse interface, which converts the spinner and trackball signals to a standard PS/2 mouse signal.
Everything appeared to work fine on the first try -- the trackball moved the mouse under Windows just fine, and the spinner, moved it back and forth (since it is only one axis) as expected.
However, the upright cabinet is configured to boot into DOS (BootGUI=0) so I can use DOS-based versions of MAME, AracdeOS, etc. As such, I am loading an old version of Microsoft's MOUSE.SYS (v6.24) that I found on this web page from my CONFIG.SYS file.
Unfortunately, any motion of the trackball or spinner noticeably slows down MAME! (in this case, v0.37b10). For example, you can load up Centipede, and even in attract mode, rolling the trackball causes the game to noticeably become "jerky". The faster you roll it, the jerkier it becomes. Playing Centipede this way really sucks, since things are so non-fluid. :-(
This isn't because the computer isn't fast enough -- it is a Pentium III 450 with 128MB of RAM, and turning off "throttling" (F10 key I think?) causes the game to run way faster than it could be played.
I find it hard to believe that this kind of behavior it acceptable to other MAME users, so I'm wondering if others have experienced this sort of thing, and if so, how did you fix it? Again, the setup is pretty straight-forward, Happ 3" trackball -> ME4 -> PS/2 mouse port. I am using the cables I purchased from Hagstrom that were designed for connecting the Happ trackball to the ME4.
I've tried adjusting the trackball sensitivity in the "Analog Controls" setup in MAME to no avail. Are there any special switches I shold be using when loading MOUSE.SYS?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!