Trackball button question

[Donkbaca]

So,  I was thinking about adding a trackball to my CP.  BUT, if I do, I don't want to add anymore buttons.  I am looking at getting a USB trackball for ease of setup.  My question is:  Is there a way to hookup my trackball buttons to my existing CP buttons?  So that, say P1 Buttons 4-5-6 are also Mouse L C R?

I know there is a way to do this, I have seen it mentioned in posts, but have not found a post that details how to do it.

Thanks!

[VanillaGorilla]

I believe you could just order a USB interface (from Randy @ GGG) for your trackball for like 15 bucks, and you then want to connect the 3 button leads from that interface to your existing (shared) buttons. You want to ground the interface also.. twisted quarter has good deals on happ trackballs, between that and the interface, you should be able to get it done for about 60-70 bucks....

[Donkbaca]

How do you share the buttons?

[markronz]

Hey there, I too didn't want to have dedicated mouse buttons on my CP, but I still wanted to have them available.  My solution I chose to use was to  hide a DPDT switch on my machine.  Just as you've described, when I flip the switch P1B5 and P1B6 become the Left and Right mouse clicks.  When I flip the switch back, back to normal arcade button presses.  I actually finally got to test this out last week, and I can confirm that the information from my post on the forum here does work:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=99485

Note, I only did left and right mouse clicks and just did not use the middle mouse click at all.   I would guess this same method would work with a third button if you used a TPDT switch though.

Also in my post, others breifly talk about some scripting options available too, in you don't like the switch idea.

[VanillaGorilla]

Theres more than 1 way to skin a cat, but you could easily do it thus:

1. re-wire existing P1 buttons 4,5,6 directly to Opti-Wiz and use as mouse buttons L C R.
2. Map the input actions that were mapped to buttons 4 5 6 in MAME to L C R on the mouse.
3. Go make a sandwich.

[markronz]

Oh yeah, one last thing.  If you intend to only use MAME, you can just map the controls to the mouse clicks, as Vanilla Gorilla describes.   Other emulators likely won't be as flexible though, and might not allow mouse clicks to be assigned as buttons.  So that's why I opted for the DPDT.   But if I was only doing MAME, I would have just wired the mouse clicks straight to the buttons.

[Donkbaca]

I think I will wire the mouse buttons straight to the buttons since I intend on using wireless XB360 gamepads for other emulators.  Then all I need to do is map buttons 4-5-6 in mame to mouse L C R.  Thanks!

[severdhed]

That's what I did,  it works great