Delay w/ Oscar model 2 spinner

[telengard]

I'm running Win98 and following most suggestions of speed and sensitivity there seems to be a significant delay between me moving the spinner and the movement on-screen.  The only time I don't seem to notice is if I move the spinner very slow.  I've disabled what I figure is mouse acceleration etc.  The spinner doesn't seem to be doing the backspin thing either so I imagine it's just some setting.  The game I see this on is Arkanoid.  I haven't tried Tempest or others, yet.  I have also put the newer encoder wheels on them ( swapped out the black plastic ones w/ the outer ring for the grey ones w/ no outer ring ) which I think have more teeth.

Any ideas?

~brian

[u_rebelscum]

Do you have the same delay in windows?

[RandyT]

Check your system for viruses if you haven't already.

I saw very similar behaviour once that tipped me off to the infection.  Cleaned the machine and the difference was like night and day.

Something to check anyway.

RandyT

[OSCAR]

The Model 2 used a pair of opto-switches that sends pulses to the encoder (Opti-PAC or otherwise) so if you are getting any movement from the spinner, the optics are okay.

Since you swapped out encoder wheel, the first thing I would suggest is to try tweaking the optic bracket slightly to see if you need to get a better "read" from the encoder wheel.  If you aren't getting a good read, the encoder may be having trouble interpreting the signals.

If that doesn't help and you are using an Opti-PAC, move the spinner connection wires from the Rotary header to the Player 1 Trackball header, and connect  your trackball (if you have one) to the P1 Rotary header.  This has helped a few people that have reported hesitation with devices connected to an Opti-PAC.

If neither of those fixes seem to help, then I think you have some software issue or perhaps even a virus like Randy suggested.  If you have any trouble getting things to work after all that, email me and we will investigate it further.

[telengard]

Do you have the same delay in windows?

Yeah it does, I just tried it out.  I did notice however that the mousespeed registry setting doesn't seem to affect acceleration, it was just a hunch.  Raising the speed back up to half-way in the control panel applet for the mouse seems to make it somewhat better, but there's still a pretty noticable delay.

[telengard]

The Model 2 used a pair of opto-switches that sends pulses to the encoder (Opti-PAC or otherwise) so if you are getting any movement from the spinner, the optics are okay.

Since you swapped out encoder wheel, the first thing I would suggest is to try tweaking the optic bracket slightly to see if you need to get a better "read" from the encoder wheel.  If you aren't getting a good read, the encoder may be having trouble interpreting the signals.

I tried moving the bracket in different locations and it didn't seem to have an effect.  I also own
2 of these Model 2s and tried the other one tonight and it behaves the same.   I also tried
putting back on the older wheels but still the same.  <shrug>

If that doesn't help and you are using an Opti-PAC, move the spinner connection wires from the Rotary header to the Player 1 Trackball header, and connect  your trackball (if you have one) to the P1 Rotary header.  This has helped a few people that have reported hesitation with devices connected to an Opti-PAC.

Interesting... I'll try that out tonight.  So you've had reports of hesitation before?

If neither of those fixes seem to help, then I think you have some software issue or perhaps even a virus like Randy suggested.  If you have any trouble getting things to work after all that, email me and we will investigate it further.

I checked for virii and didn't find anything, although I too think it's something software related.  If I can't get any further I'll email you.

Thanks to everyone for the ideas!

~brian

[OSCAR]

Interesting... I'll try that out tonight.  So you've had reports of hesitation before?

Not the way you described it, but I figured it was worth trying.  The hesitation I've heard of before was controls (spinners/trackballs) that would "go to sleep" if left unmoving for a short  period of time.  It would take a half-second of moving the control before response was registered, but after that it was okay.  From your description, it sounds like a time-delay or something.  That I have haven't heard of before.

If you have two spinners doing exactly the same thing, I would bet you have a problem in your software or encoder hookup.  Do you have a trackball connected, and does it do the same thing?  Try swapping around the inputs on the Opti-PAC to see if you can isolate the problem.