X-arcade tankstick trackball in mame with mala

[garykagan]

Hello all.  I read a thread about this back in September and I am trying to get my x-arcade up and running on my Mala arcade.  The x-arcade joystick is working and is configurable for most games so far.  The trackball shows up as samsung now (i updated the drivers) and it works as a mouse in windows.  only issue is getting the trackball to work in mame games - marble madness, etc.

mala.ini and mame.ini have mouse=1.  I have read all the x-arcade help files and tried many of what I read there as well.

Also - i have tried everything to get the x-arcade to show up in the mala dropdown for a controller, it does not show up.  figured it didnt matter as the joys and buttons are all mappable.

I have this in mala.ini
Commandline=%rom% -ctrlr x-arcade

the games with joysticks are working, but who knows if it actually is usuing the x-arcade config...

any help is greatly appreciated to get this trackball working.

[MiahXGaming]

Please see:
http://www.xgaming.com/support/questions/101/

More help:
http://www.malafe.net/index.php?page=docshelp

[garykagan]

Please see:
http://www.xgaming.com/support/questions/101/

More help:
http://www.malafe.net/index.php?page=docshelp

Thanks, but that is the first place I checked before posting here.  I have tried those steps.  Also, I cannot get the x-arcade to show up in the dropdown as a controller to pick from.  I mapped in Mame the 2nd joystick to resolve that issue manually.  Not sure if that makes a difference with the trackball.  In marble madness, the joysticks control the marble.  I would really like the trackball to work.  Very frustrating.

I also read about making sure the ini files have mouse selected, and they do.

[Garetmax]

I have a tankstick and have it configured for Mame and everything works great.

My command line is:
%rom% -ctrlr xarcade
Does your xarcade.cfg file really have a dash in it?  
Mine does not.

Do you have this?
Look in the Mala Mame Executable Config tab and then in the Controllers Tab which is the Mame.ini editor.
I put "trackball=mouse" and selected "Enable mouse input".

Mine doesn't show up in a dropdown either.

I also made a change in Mame.
Launch any Mame game and push the Tab key.
Go to Input(General) and then go to Player1 Controls.
Go down to Track X Analog and configure this to your trackball.  Mine happens to be Track X.
Do the same for Track Y Analog.  Mine is Track Y.

I don't understand about your trackball showing up as "samsung" with new drivers.  Where does it show that?

I tested Marble Madness and both the joystick and the trackball control the marble.  The marble moves real slow with the trackball so the sensitivity can be adjusted by pushing tab for the mame controls and then going into analog control to make adjustments.

It took me a lot of time to get my trackball to work originally as there wasn't any one post that had the info.

[garykagan]

going to try this right now

[garykagan]

I don't understand about your trackball showing up as "samsung" with new drivers.  Where does it show that?

In device manager.  This is correct, x-arcade's website shows it should be a samsung "mouse".  this way if you have a mouse and the track you know which is which.

[garykagan]

I have a tankstick and have it configured for Mame and everything works great.

My command line is:
%rom% -ctrlr xarcade
Does your xarcade.cfg file really have a dash in it?  
Mine does not.

Do you have this?
Look in the Mala Mame Executable Config tab and then in the Controllers Tab which is the Mame.ini editor.
I put "trackball=mouse" and selected "Enable mouse input".

Mine doesn't show up in a dropdown either.

I also made a change in Mame.
Launch any Mame game and push the Tab key.
Go to Input(General) and then go to Player1 Controls.
Go down to Track X Analog and configure this to your trackball.  Mine happens to be Track X.
Do the same for Track Y Analog.  Mine is Track Y.

I don't understand about your trackball showing up as "samsung" with new drivers.  Where does it show that?

I tested Marble Madness and both the joystick and the trackball control the marble.  The marble moves real slow with the trackball so the sensitivity can be adjusted by pushing tab for the mame controls and then going into analog control to make adjustments.

It took me a lot of time to get my trackball to work originally as there wasn't any one post that had the info.

where exactly did you put trackball=mouse and where exactly did you Enable Mouse input?  I am going through all the menus and i dont see it.  I am using 1.74

[Garetmax]

I'm running Mala 1.74 as well and windows-7 32-bit.

My trackball just shows up as another mouse in device manager and doesn't show as Samsung so I must have older drivers for it.

Since your trackball works in windows, it will work in Mala.

Here's a couple screenshots of where the mame ini editor is.  It's easy to miss it.

To the right of the mame executable line, the button that says "config" is how to get to the mame.ini editor.

The next screenshot shows the controllers tab where I checked the box for enable mouse input and selected the drop-down box for "trackball" as "mouse".


Let me know if this works.
Scott

[garykagan]

I had high hopes, but no it didnt work.  I checked the mame.ini after i set the config within the Mala config screens and i see

trackball_device        mouse
mouse                   1

I tried marble madness and missle command, no luck.  maybe i need to hit tab and set them manually for x and y analog?  i am trying that as well, but the trackball does not register as anything so when i try to assign it, nothing happens.

I will keep trying...thanks for any help

[garykagan]

I have a tankstick and have it configured for Mame and everything works great.

My command line is:
%rom% -ctrlr xarcade
Does your xarcade.cfg file really have a dash in it?  
Mine does not.

Do you have this?
Look in the Mala Mame Executable Config tab and then in the Controllers Tab which is the Mame.ini editor.
I put "trackball=mouse" and selected "Enable mouse input".

Mine doesn't show up in a dropdown either.

I also made a change in Mame.
Launch any Mame game and push the Tab key.
Go to Input(General) and then go to Player1 Controls.
Go down to Track X Analog and configure this to your trackball.  Mine happens to be Track X.
Do the same for Track Y Analog.  Mine is Track Y.

I don't understand about your trackball showing up as "samsung" with new drivers.  Where does it show that?

I tested Marble Madness and both the joystick and the trackball control the marble.  The marble moves real slow with the trackball so the sensitivity can be adjusted by pushing tab for the mame controls and then going into analog control to make adjustments.

It took me a lot of time to get my trackball to work originally as there wasn't any one post that had the info.

i tried going into the game and hitting tab, player one controls and scrolling down to track x analog.  funny thing is the track can be used to scroll in this menu.  then i click enter on track x analog and that's when it doesnt take any key or movement of any input device, it just is stuck.  it is blanked out and cant be filled in with any button, joystick or mouse/track movement.  if i hit enter on a key like " fire 1 ", then i click a button, it works.  just the analog track x and y seem to make it stuck.  Would be great if x-arcade would return my emails and actually help with this.  not too happy with their lack of ANY customer service.  thanks to all for any assistance.

[Garetmax]

I'm not sure why yours doesn't work.

When I hit tab and then assign the track X analog, I just hit enter and then roll my trackball to the right and it shows up as mouse X.

Since you can't do this - then this is why your trackball doesn't work in Mame.  The question is, why?  This seems more like a Mame issue than Mala.

Possible ideas:
- Maybe your Mame has a problem or your running a different style Mame or older version than me.  I'm running Mame 141 which I compiled.  I also had my trackball running on Mame 135 or 146 when I first started.  Are you running a non-command line Mame?  I would reload Mame on my computer and not use a non-command line version if you've got one your using.

- Maybe go back to the earlier version of the x-arcade software that came with the tankstick and not get the latest drivers.  I don't remember updating the drivers on mine at all.  I would definitely try this.

- Maybe your xarcade.cfg file has an issue.  I've attached mine for you.  If yours is different then mine, try mine.  Just change the extention from .txt to .cfg.

- Are you using your trackball as the USB cable or serial?  I'm using mine as USB.

I'm sure others would know whats up with Mame not seeing your trackball.  Maybe there's more of a mame forum to post about that.

Scott

[quadrider1]

I have only used one of these but i dont remember putting -ctrl xarcade behind the commmand line, I just remember adding xarcade where ctrlr is under core input in mame ini. Dont know if you tried this but nothing worked till i did this. Also if you have a mouse plugged in try putting multi mouse on. Thats my two cents lol

[Garetmax]

I just looked at my mame.ini and my multimouse shows a 0 but I would definitely try enabling it and doing what quadrider did.

Here's my mame.ini for reference.

[garykagan]

 :applaud:Problem Solved!

OK - I started with getting the new version of MAME 1.42 I believe.  That didn't do it.  Then I tried the xarcade config you supplied, no good either, but I kept yours in place.  Then I tried using MAMEUI32 and it still didn't work.  So then I read more on the GUI version and how that has it's own screens to setup the mouse input and trackball.  I went into the config setting on the GUI, saw that trackball was not set as mouse and it was not enabled.  Now, I tell you that via MALA, the mame config does show trackball=mouse and it is enabled, so this must be a different one.  Anyway, it starts working in the GUI version.

So I shut down the gui and now I start Mala, and a trackball game and it works.  Very confusing, but it looks like the gui settings for mame.ini make it work in MALA/mame. 
I appreciate all your help in getting this to work. 

I set my analog sensitivity to 50 for x and y and it seems pretty good.  What did you set your analog settings to for the trackball?  just wondering...

thanks!

Gary