Posted by Mojo2000 on 9, 2001 at 1:27 AM:
At a nearby CashConverters I recently picked up a whack of stuff I considered potentially useful in the long-term construction of my dream MAME cab.
1. two Suncom FX 2000 PC flight-type joysticks at $3 CDN each (bought for feel, looks and true ambidextrous function)
2. two parallel printer cables (36-pin D-sub to Centronics) at $8 CDN each
3. one OLD three-way printer switchbox at $5.
Nos. 2 and 3 suggest an ambitious switching affair involving a Mame PC, a Jamma board and a Dreamcast. :-) But let's just start with No. 1.
I wanted to use those two sticks for tank games such as Assault, Vindicators 1 & 2, Battlezone and the like. They would also be useful in games such as Tron, Forgotten Worlds and Heavy Barrel when paired with a spinner.
Some have suggested gluing the handles of such controllers to the shafts of Happs joysticks, but that poses a separate problem of how to keep the stick from rotating accidentally and possibly jamming the internal wires. Why not just keep the sticks more or less how they are...
For starters, would Mame have problems interpreting (analog) stick signals for use in digital 8-way games?
(Later, I will pester you all on the physical question of how to connect the wiring for two or four of these at a time to an I-Pac and/or through a switchbox...)