Posted by Dan on 3, 2000 at 11:04 PM:
If you've always wanted to connect a steering wheel
to your arcade cabinet, but don't want to spend the
cash on the real arcade parts, read on for an
inexpensive alternative..
Back in 1992, I bought a MouseYoke and MouseWheel.
Both of these products were made by a company called
Colorado Spectrum. The idea was simple yet brilliant.
Simply slide your mouse into the elastic band that
was attached to a small box that was open in the middle.
Then you push a long plastic rod through a hole in the
front of this box. You then attach the wheel or yoke
to the end of the rod. Lastly, you slide on the supplied
vice onto the grooves at the bottom of the box and
secure it to your desk. The whole idea is that when
you turn the wheel or pull in/out on the yoke, the rod
causes friction against the ball of the mouse and it
moves in the appropriate direction. Well, tonight while
I was driving home from work, I remembered that I still
had these products tucked away in my closet. I got them
out, hooked it all up and fired up Super Sprint and
guess what... it worked! I then tried it with Pole
Position and it worked better than any other control
I've tried to use with this game including my PC
Thrustmaster steering wheel. I'm writing this message
because I don't think it would be that difficult to
make this device from scratch (I doubt the products are
still in production:) The next step is to create an
enclosure to secure everything and prevent it from
coming apart.
Thanks for your time,
Dan