Re: Few questions before building a control panel

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Posted by Sharone on February 14, 2002 at 14:45:37:

In Reply to: Re: Few questions before building a control panel posted by Lilwolf on February 14, 2002 at 09:43:46:

i read about the opti-pac but whats the advantage of that over just using a real trackball. If i understood correctly, it takes a happ style trackball and changes the signal to serial. Why not just skip this step and use an already existing serial trackball. Then just use a PS/2 mouse for the spinner?

: : 1) Some games use ctrl and alt for triggers, others that have up to 6 buttons, use characters on the keyboard. How can i set mame to use the same keystrokes for triggers on all games? Without this, i wont really know which pin on the encoder to match with a keystroke when each game is changing.

: configure the mame defaults for this. player1 button1 - button10. This will set them for 95% of the games.

: : 2) When playing a new game, one always must type in 'ok' to access the game, how do i get around that because i may not have the o and k chars on the control?

: move left then right on the joystick gets past "OK".

: : 3) When installing a trackball and spinner, do they both run as mice but the spinner has the y-axis removed?

: There isn't any great ways to do this. If you go with Opti-pac, it will allow you to have a trackball and a spinner on the same mouse port. If one is moving, it disables the other. But I hear there can be a little 'lag' when doing this. The best is to have two mice configured and have a spinner on one and the trackball on ther other. Or better yet. Make a hotswappable control panel and have a trackball on one, and a spinner on the other.

: : 4) In conjunction with 3, do they just get plugged into the the mouse port and are they completely independant of the encoder?

: You need to hack them. Opti-pac is a card made by the ipac guy that will convert a standard arcade trackball into a serial mouse. Or you can break apart a USB mouse and hack that. Many options, no great ones for 2players in my mind (someone has a mame compile with 2+ usb mice, and optipac handles 2 serial mice with special drivers)

: : Thanks in advance for any help someone can offer.

: thats what I'm here for :)

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: i read about the opti-pac but whats the advantage of that over just using a real trackball. If i understood correctly, it takes a happ style trackball and changes the signal to serial. Why not just skip this step and use an already existing serial trackball. Then just use a PS/2 mouse for the spinner? : : : : 1) Some games use ctrl and alt for triggers, others that have up to 6 buttons, use characters on the keyboard. How can i set mame to use the same keystrokes for triggers on all games? Without this, i wont really know which pin on the encoder to match with a keystroke when each game is changing. : : configure the mame defaults for this. player1 button1 - button10. This will set them for 95% of the games. : : : 2) When playing a new game, one always must type in 'ok' to access the game, how do i get around that because i may not have the o and k chars on the control? : : move left then right on the joystick gets past "OK". : : : 3) When installing a trackball and spinner, do they both run as mice but the spinner has the y-axis removed? : : There isn't any great ways to do this. If you go with Opti-pac, it will allow you to have a trackball and a spinner on the same mouse port. If one is moving, it disables the other. But I hear there can be a little 'lag' when doing this. The best is to have two mice configured and have a spinner on one and the trackball on ther other. Or better yet. Make a hotswappable control panel and have a trackball on one, and a spinner on the other. : : : 4) In conjunction with 3, do they just get plugged into the the mouse port and are they completely independant of the encoder? : : You need to hack them. Opti-pac is a card made by the ipac guy that will convert a standard arcade trackball into a serial mouse. Or you can break apart a USB mouse and hack that. Many options, no great ones for 2players in my mind (someone has a mame compile with 2+ usb mice, and optipac handles 2 serial mice with special drivers) : : : Thanks in advance for any help someone can offer. : : thats what I'm here for :)

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