Hmm I don't think I read this schematic correctly. Steering wheel help?

[dmworking247]

Over the weekend I spent a lot of hours wiring up some custom harnesses to convert my Hot Rod cabinet into a MAME setup.

I've got a pretty poor scan of the original manual including a wiring schematic which I thought I interpreted correctly, but when I've plugged in the Optipac the wheels aren't registering in MAME.

I'm now panicking that I've got the pinout wrong on the opti sensors, and it would be devastating if I've killed all 4 opto boards at once.

Can someone please help me look at this schematic and/or PCB of the opto sensor, and tell me which is 5v, which is GND, and which are the X1 and X2 channels that I should route to the Optipac? The bloody wiring diagram refers to 'sensor board' but doesn't have anything in the manual about the boards themselves.

Wiring Diagram Link
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/88079609/hotrod/4%20Player%20Hot%20Rod%20Wiring%20Diagram.pdf

[BadMouth]

I'm a bit confused by it too. (of course I'm an electronics noob)


My initial thought is that the yellow is power and the white is ground because....
In the above pic, those have to be the emitters on the bottom since they are sharing power and ground and a resistor is usually inline on the power side to prevent it from drawing too much current (just like an LED).

The receivers would be on the top side in that pic because they each have their own pin.
What I'm a bit confused by is that instead of just having power run in one side and the other side run to the sensing pin, they are grounded when they sense light (if that is the ground).

It's like the original board worked by sensing when the pin goes to ground (goes low) instead of sensing pulses of power.
I guess when it's flipping back and forth, it's pretty much the same thing.

I believe there are some arcade boards that don't work with the Opti-Wiz.
The Opti-Pac may be the same way.  I'd contact Andy at ultimarc and ask if this is the case.

Hopefully someone with more electronic engineering smarts will weigh in.

[SailorSat]

The opti-pac supports both, though you eventually need to switch polarity via software ( see http://www.ultimarc.com/optipac3.html )

[dmworking247]

Hallelujah people, thank you so much.

After some additional help from the members of the AA forum on measuring voltages, as well as the above posts, I figured out these "Hot Rod" encoders are reversed from normal, and I just needed the cleverly hidden "Active High" utility on the Ultimarc page:
http://www.ultimarc.com/optipac3.html

The earlier statement (on the same page) that no drivers/software are needed for the Optipac in Windows had thoroughly thrown me off the scent.

Thankyou!!!

Edit:

The mouse cursor is definitely moving in windows, but in MAME it still isn't registering when I try to map analog controls and move the wheel (nothing happens) but when I move the regular mouse it works.

I'm not panicing yet though as we've now proven the hardware is working, the rest is software... and since this is just using my laptop (not the to-be PC for the MAME build) I'll wait until I try it on that before exploring further.

[BadMouth]

Is mouse enabled in mame.ini?
If it is, is multimouse enabled?
If multimouse is enabled, mame will look at each mouse separately instead of the windows system mouse.  So you'd have to make sure that it's mapped to the correct mouse.

The pulse count on that wheel looks crazy low.
Crank the sensitivity way up under analog settings in mame's in game menu (tab)

sent from my phone while driving

[dmworking247]

Is mouse enabled in mame.ini?
If it is, is multimouse enabled?
If multimouse is enabled, mame will look at each mouse separately instead of the windows system mouse.  So you'd have to make sure that it's mapped to the correct mouse.

The pulse count on that wheel looks crazy low.
Crank the sensitivity way up under analog settings in mame's in game menu (tab)

sent from my phone while driving

Ok investigations continue on this optipac issue. Mouse is enabled, and so is multimouse. The wheels control the windows mouse cursor successfully.

I go into mame and into the tab menu, then try to map the P1 analog paddle controk (for example). i can get any real physical mouse to register (mouse 1 x, mouse 2 x) but moving the wheel/optipac doesnt register. Its worthwhile noting that the optipac cursor movement in windows is a bit slow, so I tried turning windows cursor speed to maximum in case turning the wheel wasnt enough of a movement to pick up in mame settings... still no joy.

Yet the plot thickens... if I set multimouse to 0 (off) so that any mouse controls the same mouse/cursor, the optipac does move the cars in game (in mame) yet STILL doesnt register when using the mame tab setup menu (whereas a real mouse does).

The only possibilities I see is that the optipac isnt a 'mouse' to mame (unlikely) or these particular sensor boards from the hot rod cabinet are such low sensitivity that I simply cant get enough movement of the cursor for the mame tab menu to pick it up.

I had a quick go at editing the .cfg file of default controls manually to try and force mouse1,2,3,4 or 5 to move p1 analog but that didnt work when I turned multimouse back on. What gives?! Im getting a bit stuck. Any ideas appreciated!

PS: problem is the same in mame 106, 134, and 151b.

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[BadMouth]

Any way to try a wheel with more teeth?

I suspect the input system in MAME changed at some point and it doesn't register lower resolutions as well as it used to. (no idea which version)
I had some miniature 12 count per revolution encoders that I wanted to use in rotary sticks and MAME would not pick them up at all.
It would pick up the same interface with the same settings just fine if using a higher count encoder.

If multimouse is enabled, MAME is getting the input directly from the device, so adjustments in windows wouldn't make a difference.
If multimouse is turned off, MAME gets the input of the "system mouse" through windows, so those adjustments would help.
This kinda follows what you are experiencing.

[dmworking247]

Thanks for the tips BadMouth, I think we are on to something with the low res encoders, although my experiments so far have already been using a high pin count encoder wheel typical of a happ trackball.

I will try dialing up the analog sensitivity in mame itself, then the next step will have to be trying a sensor board from an old trackball or mouse. It will be a pain if I have to use different encoders since I was trying to use all of the original hardware, but not impossible.

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