Posted by EmuMannen on 13, 2001 at 6:05 PM:
In Reply to: analog cotrols in MAME... explanation how to posted by p-man on 13, 2001 at 11:04 AM:
: Lately thereīs been alot of threads both here and on the official MAME board regarding the use of analog controls (like analog steering wheels and pedals). There has been alot of really good answers but Iīd like to add my experiances as I redently finished hooking up both an arcade steering wheel and pedals to my JAMMA cab.
: As stated, I have a JAMMA cab, bought on the internet from Austria last summer. Works great, with 2x8way joys and 2x3buttons. After a general cleanup and a repaint it also looks...well, OK (all black). I have some JAMMA boards but wanted to use MAMe (and RAINE). So I read the PC2JAMMA site very closely and built the interface, actually it was quite easy and I have no prior electronics experiance. Anyways, with AdvanceMAME and Mon-Arc this worked great, a real arcade feeling.
: Some of my all time favourite arcade games are racers, Outrun, ChaseHQ, etc and playing them with 1) stick and buttons and 2)digital sticks wasnīt really adding to the arcade feel... Iīve thought for a long time that I should try to add steering wheel and pedal support to the cab but this hasnīt really been done (or atleast documented on the internet) too much, so I hesitated. I contacted Emumannen, a fellow Swede, who also was thinking about adding analog support to his cab. He prefers an optical steering wheel connected to the opti-pac...Well, I wasnīt sure that would give me the arcade feeling...
: Anyway, I had an old PC steering wheel with pedals that I never used īcause it sucked (it connected to the desk with suction cups..) It was also very cheap, so I thrashed it and saved only the potentiometer for the steering wheel and the two potentiometers for the gas/brake pedals. I then experimented with MAME and got DOS-MAME to recognize it as a analog joystick w 4 buttons. But I still didnīt know how to physicaly make this into a cab steering wheel.
: My JAMMA cab has a detachable control panel with clamps and snap-tight connectors, so I knew I could fit a new panel if I wanted. I then started looking for steering wheels w potentiometers, found some at Happ controls and Swallow amusements, but theyīre expensive, especially when you want dual pot pedals and an up/down shifter. After looking and concidering I found an old ChaseHQ panel complete with potentiometer steering wheel and a shifter with nitro boost button and to a (relatively) resonable price, so I bought it. Before it even arrived, I ordered a double pot gas/brake pedal assembly from Happ Europe, and that was really (too) expensive, but now I was inspired. Well, the parts arrived, before anything else I stripped the ChaseHQ panel from all old wireing and soldered new ones. I then connected the steering wheels pot to the PC steering wheels PCB and... not so much! seems like the PC steering wheel didnīt like foreign potentiometers, it didnīt register even in Win. So, I replaced the arcade pot with the PC one (no, it didnīt fit at all, but superglue and a ballpoint pen makes it fit now) wich works great, easy to calibrate even in DOS-MAME. Well, how about the pedals? Really the same story, the original arcade pots didnīt work at all so a replaced them to with the PC ones too (they fitted even worsely, if possible). My cab had (has) a coin collector in front, at the bottom. When I removed the door and coin bucket, the opening in the board was perfect for the pedal arrangement wich is large and (very) heavy. All I had to do was to turn the front bottom panel since the coin collector was at the left and the pedals should be at the right. I mounted the pedals, made some wood side pieces for the steering wheel so that it would fit the cab, made wireing to the joystick buttons and added a micro switch on the shifter (it was only one switch, as in low=no switch hi=switch pressed) but mame wants one button for hi and one for low, well that was easyly fixed with superglue. The remaining buttons were mapped to the booster button and to the start button. I crammed everything in the JAMMA cab and (eventually) everything worked like a charm, expecially in ChaseHQ not suprisingly! Too bad Outrun is broken in the last MAME versions, I canīt seem to get my hands on older versions of advMAME...
: Anyway, my best advice to anyone wanting to make steering controls like this: Take a cheap gameport analog PC steering wheel with 2-4buttons and potentiometers and make sure it workes in MAME, if it does, get the arcade hardware and simply(!) connect it. It is that simple.
: Phew, my story this far. Adress all question here, feel free to comment!
: P-man