Changing Joysticks

[milhouse]

I am thinking of adding some swappable controls to my cab but I am concerned about the headache of dealing with the different USB IDs and joystick numbers.

For instance, if I wanted to have a USB Joystick and a USB Wheel - which would never be connected at the same time - I don't think there would be an issue because I think it would always show up as "Joystick 6" on my system.  (I have 2 UltraSticks, an A-Pac and two AimTrak devices).  And the same should happen if I added another analog USB device and only had it installed.  But I am concerned that if I reboot or someone accidentally plugs in a Nintendo USB controller to the external USB port it would throw off the input number and now maybe its Joystick 3 and I'd spend even more of my time reconfiguring Mame.

So is there a way to "lock" a joystick number to a specific device so that no matter how many devices I do or do not have plugged in at once, Mame always uses the correct controller?

Thanks.

Thanks.

[penjuin]

What operating system are you using?

also, this project is along the same sort of lines: http://www.beersmith.com/mame/

[milhouse]

Windows XP w/ SP2.  I'm not too worried about the physical part as I am going to build a single mount in front of the main CP.  I was planning on wiring things manually to the A-Pac, but figure it would be a lot easier with USB and I could keep force feedback.  I am more worried about the software side of things and having to reset the inputs everytime I play because a joystick ID is different.

[penjuin]

this is an interesting problem. I'm not sure how one would solve this on windows easily, but take a look at the "devcon" utility which is built into xp. You could potentially write a batch script (or use another programming language) that would disconnect and reconnect devices in the correct order. That wouldn't completely solve the problem though, because there is no way that I know of to assign joystick 1 to a device if there is no joystick 0; you'd have to keep them all plugged in all the time.

[drventure]

Did you see the utility I posted a few weeks back? I've had the exact same problem.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=108767.0

ControllerRemap is a little exe you run right before starting Mame that will remap the controls to whatever controls you actually have currently hooked up.

I'd be interested if it works for you, or if not, what it might need

[milhouse]

That sounds like exactly what I need.  I will check it out once I get everything built.

Thanks.