Wiring Joysticks

[thecount]

I am new to the mame world. I am in the process of building a cabinet. I want to set up my control panel to work with 4-players with 8-way joysticks. My question is do I need to physically wire all 8 directions or do I wire just 4 directions and the joystick manipulates the diagonals? The reason I ask is because I notice when I am using Mame32 and I go into the menu, it has keys associated with the diagonals for player1 & 2, but not 3 or 4. I haven't purchased a keyboard emulator yet. I am leaning towards the Hagstrom KE72 because of the amount of inputs. Any help would greatly be appreciated.

[SirPeale]

Four directions, and the joystick does the others.

What games are you thinking of that have all 8 directions?  I just checked out Street Fighter for example, and there's only four (up, down, left right)

[thecount]

Thank you, I think I was getting confused with the general input instead of looking at the individual game controls. I play the simpsons with 4-players and I looked and all you need is the 4 main directions. Thanks again for your response. Any tips on which keyboard emulator to go with? Anything I should avoid?

[Tiger-Heli]

>My question is do I need to physically wire all 8 directions or do I >wire just 4 directions and the joystick manipulates the diagonals?

Four directions, there are only 4 switches on the joystick.

>it has keys associated with the diagonals for player1 & 2, but not 3 >or 4.

I think you may be thinking of games where it says Joystick 1 Left Up.  This is NOT the NW diagonal on a 8-way game, this is the left side joystick up position on dual joystick games like Assault or Bzone.

> I haven't purchased a keyboard emulator yet. I am leaning towards >the Hagstrom KE72 because of the amount of inputs. Any help would >greatly be appreciated.

KE-72 is WAY!!!! overpriced.  Go with an MK64 (www.mk64.com/ron), I-PAC/4 (www.ultimarc.com) or a KeyWiz (www.groovygamegear.com), but you'll need a lot of shortcuts for 4-player support with the KeyWiz (but it's doable).

Shameless plug: See this page for more encoder info:
http://www.fraggersxtreme.com/arcadepanels/encoder/

[thecount]

I am confusing the diagonals with the dual joystick setup. Thanks for clearing that up for me, learning everyday. I will check out the emulators you mentioned. I want to add spinner/trackball controls as well. I read about the opti-pac and it looks great. Can I combine the opti-pac with the MK64?

[Hellfromabove]

There are some games such as Time Flippers or something like that where you use that special joystick from SNK (that yellow one). Those are the games that use the diagonals also. Thanx.

-See Ya!!!

[Tiger-Heli]

There are some games such as Time Flippers or something like that where you use that special joystick from SNK (that yellow one). Those are the games that use the diagonals also. Thanx.

Confusing info alert.  Thecount has it right now, it's the dual joystick setup that he was thinking were diagonals.  The SNK LS-30 yellow joysticks were used in Time Killers (I think?) but were better known for the IKARI warriors series.  They are directly supported in the MK64 encoder (uses 12 inputs for 2 sticks, besides the U,D,L,R) or by using Druin's interface www.connect.to/rotary with any other encoder.  The SNK games do not map the diagonals in MAME.  About the only game that should is Q-bert, but even it just uses up, down, left, right, with the understanding that the stick is rotated 45 degrees, but I digress . . .

I want to add spinner/trackball controls as well. I read about the opti-pac and it looks great. Can I combine the opti-pac with the MK64?

Ok, before I give the straight answer, check out OSCAR's http://www.oscarcontrols.com/cgi-bin/cart.pl?DT=1 USB mouse hack interface on the order page.  At $9 without button support or $12.50 with button support, it will save you a lot of money over a Opti-pac.

It you just want a spinner and a trackball, you could either use two of his mouse hacks, or http://www.oscarcontrols.com/DPDTswitch.shtml has information on hooking both to a single interface using a DPDT switch to select between the T-ball and spinner.

If you want more controls, (dual spinner, dual trackballs, and opto-rotary joysticks) for example, then the Opti-pac makes more sense b/c of it's auto-active switching function.

As far as connections, the Opti-Pac or any other optical control can be used with any encoder.  Think of the keyboard encoder as a Keyboard hack, and the Opti-Pac as a mouse hack and you'll be pretty close.  The only thing I am not sure of is the following:  The original Opti-Pac (serial ports) required a +5V input.  I believe the current one is self-powered in USB mode.  If not:

You can pull +5V from the PC power supply, or

The KeyWiz has a +5V screw terminal, or

The I-PAC has a +5 V header pin, but you need to use a motherboard  LED cable or a CD-ROM Audio cable to connect to it, or

The MK64 by default does not supply +5V, however, I think a board with +5V on any of the unused inputs can be obtained by request, contact RonM for details.