Posted by Shawn P. Maloy on November 03, 1999 at 16:53:19:
A couple of questions regarding a homemade spinner controler:
1) I began hacking into an Atari 2600 driving controller. It is a rare item that was bundled with the game Indy 500 and looks very similar to the Atari paddles. Instead of a variable resistor, the driving controller is a freely spinning knob, however, instead of an optical input the rotary mechanism registers on/off switch type connections when the knob is rotated.
My question is: Is there some way to configure this as an analog "dial" even though it is a digital "switch"?
(I could hook it up as a fire button and spin it like crazy for rapid fire.....)
2) This dilema has spawned another question. Many of the new mice have a scroll wheel that has the same type of mechanism. Would MAME see this as another mappable control? It would be ideal.
Also, a few mice have true optical scroll wheels. The cheap Comp-USA mouse appears to be this way. Has anyone tried one of these?