Posted by Michael Bobroski on September 05, 1999 at 17:27:54:
In Reply to: More suggestions needed!!!!!!!! posted by Tripps on September 03, 1999 at 15:46:22:
I'm in the same boat as you w/ pulling the 'ol keyboard out through the coin door.
To tell you the truth, I'm a bit lazy, so the k/b just hangs out w/ the door permanently
half open. :) If I come across a good, cheap wireless, I may install that, but that would
require all sorts of additional mounting, and I'd still have to pull the damn thing out of
my coin door. :) I haven't gotten around to it yet, but I'm probably going to pick up
one of those sleek, black mini-keyboards at the next computer show.
At about half the size of a regular kb, it'll be easier to pull out of the coin door, and
with the black color, it'll look sharp even hanging off to the side for those times I'm
'too tired' to put it back. :) Oh, and an $8 price tag helps a bit, too! :)
As far as your KE24 instant config question, I haven't ever found it necessary to do such a
thing. MAME is very easy to reprogram keys.. Just press 'TAB' and either 'default keys' for
your universal config, or 'current game settings' for your current game. I'm sure you already
knew that, tho. :) To make things easier (and to keep that keyboard on the floor), I added 3
buttons to my control panel to make life easier: Escape, TAB, and Enter. With these three buttons,
I can customize my game settings whenever necessary.
As far as Wheel and pedals, I have no answers.. I'll worry about that when Pole Position is emulated. :)
-Mike
:
: : The MAMESteroids machine is almost complete! I am almost done with my asteroids machine conversion into a MAME machine. I picked up a completely empty Asteroids cabinet with a control panel and have mounted two new WICO joysticks, tracball, spinner and a gazzzzzzillion buttons, all interfaced through a Hagstrom KE24 high speed encoder. It works AWSOME!!!!
: : Now for the suggestions I need.... Its a pain in the #*(&*#!!! to use the keyboard, as there is no good place to put it. Right now, I pull the keyboard out through the coin door and prop it up somewhere near the game, nearby chair, etc.. Has anyone come up with a good (simple) design for a shelf, used a wireless keyboard and actually liked it, etc?????
: : Also, I more than occasionally want to use my Thrustmaster Steering Wheel and pedals, and right now I cant think up a really good and convenient way to do this. Obviously, some type of shelf to mount this to would solve the problem, and might also help with the keyboard problem as well, but a really good design would come in handy. Free beer to the winning design!!
: : And now my final question for fellow arcade geeks who are smarter than I... is there a way to launch the KE24 with proper/game-specific config when a particular MAME or Retrocade game is launched all in one fell swoop? Is there a front-end that accomplishes this task? Can I tell WIN98 to do this somehow?