hey now that ur back 
, what was that Bill_S was talking about up there with the lightguns.
i have 98SE, and my guns would be different everytime i boot the comp. sometimes both on the same mouse using buttons 1/2 and 3/4, sometimes on a diff mouse both using buttons 1/2. it was never the same. that along with having to calibrate everytime, i havent used them in a while.
i think the prob is cuz i have 5 mice on there right now....
regular mouse (til i add buttons for the trackball)
trackball (which is 2, cuz the optical encoder)
2 lightguns
is what he is talking about related to that? and if not, do you or rebel know how i can keep them seperate and non-changing?
Win9x orders the mice by the order it sees them during/after startup. The first mouse (mouse 0, or "sysmouse" from now on) is always the combination of all the mice's inputs. Win9x keeps a list of which USB mouse uses which driver, sort of like mouse1 defaultdriver, mouse2 specialdriverAA, mouse3 defaultdriver. Win9x then checks the USB ports if the USB mice are attached. If all mice use a drifferent driver, you're fine. However, if you look at example list, two mice use the same driver. So the first mouse to reply "I use defaultdriver" becomes mouse1 in this example; the second mouse to repley "I use defaultdriver" becomes mouse3.
Sounds like your mice are having a "race condition", and sometimes mouse x is coming in first while other times mouse y or z wins the race. This happens not only with lightguns, but any USB mice (or game controllers) that share the same driver.
There are a few things you might be able to do to handicap your mice and lightguns so they almost always come in the same order.
USB ports also have an order, and win9x "calls" down them in order (but does not wait for an answer before calling down the next one). Usually the ports in a computer come in pairs, each pair sharing a "Root Hub". Usually RootHub0 is polled first, then RootHub1, then (if exists) RootHub2, etc. Mice attatched to RootHub0 have a
very slightly better chance in coming in first. Which ports are which RootHub depends on the motherboard.
Devices plugged into an extern hub take a little longer to reply than if not plugged into a hub. (not distance, but the hub has to be setup before the devices down it can talk to the computer)
Optipac USB is like a Hub, as it must connect before the trackballs attatched to it can connect. The optipac seems very good, and the mice attatched to it get ordered in the same way, in my experence.
Each RootHub has a certain bandwidth, and devices attatched to the RootHub must share that bandwidth.
Some devices take longer to reply than others.
One way is to find which devices that conflict spaces take the longest and what's the RootHub number of the ports in your computer, and then attatching the faster mouse to RootHub0, the next fastest to RootHub1, the third to a quick replying hub attatched to RootHub1, and the slowest attached to a slower replaying hub attatched to a slower replying hub attated to RootHub2.
A pain to test out with all the rebooting and stuff.
Note that hubs can vary in reply space, and that other devices (gamepads for example) can change the timing.
The best way is to get devices so that none of them use the same drivers, so they don't switch around, or if other devices were as nice as the Optipac. But that's hard to do.
(One of the problems with "no special drivers needed" is that it means it uses windows supplied drivers, which means it can get into race conditions with other "no special drivers" devices.)
Sorry for the long, slightly OT post, TheGatesofBill. Hope you don't mind.
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