Posted by Andy Geez on 22, 2000 at 2:11 PM:
In Reply to: What are rotary joysticks? NT posted by AD on 22, 2000 at 12:17 PM:
Rotary joysticks are joysticks that have a knob which rotated, there are two different types.
Rotary (fixed postional), these send ohm signals to represent where the rotary postion is, as used in games like Ikari Warriors, Gurrella War, Heavy Barrell (these probably could be connected to a PC, although MAME/Allegro would need to be modified to support it, and I am 99% sure that the ohm signal would be too low for PC ports to pickup).
The other type is optical rotary as used in games like Caliber 50, Downtown, Forgotten Worlds, this has an optical encoder which works very similar to a mouse, I have these and can safetly say they are easy to hook up (in MAME this functions all rotary type games, and its pretty good fun, although you don't get that nice clicky feel like Ikari warriors).
I hope that helped.