Spinner not working

[thewumpus]

I have an original Oscar Controls spinner and am trying to get it working in MAME.  It's plugged into an old Serial OptiPAC board, as is my trackball (P1 Spinner, and P1 Trackball inputs, respectively).

My (Happ) trackball works fine both in Windows and in MAME (e.g., Arkanoid).  But my spinner doesn't seem to do anything at all in MAME, and in the Windows desktop the mouse pointer wiggles back and forth very slightly without ever moving its home position, or if I turn on Mouse Acceleration, ot just causes the pointer to move left regardless of which direction I turn the spinner).  So clearly Windows is getting some sort of hardware input from the spinner, I just don't know if it's normal.

The spinner is enabled in my mame config file, and multimouse is set to 0.  Mouse acceleration is off.  The OptiPAC is getting power from a JPAC (and presumably functioning OK, or the trackball wouldn't work either).

Any idea as to whether this is a hardware or software issue?  Thanks!

[Nephasth]

Plug the spinner into the trackball inputs. Same behavior? Your spinner is jacked up. Works fine? Your Optipac is jacked up.

[PL1]

in the Windows desktop the mouse pointer wiggles back and forth very slightly without ever moving its home position

This points toward one of two possibilities:

  1. One of the two optos is burned out, causing that data line to be stuck either high or low. (most likely)

  2. One of the encoder inputs is stuck either high or low.

When you slowly turn the axis, the data lines should alternate between logic high (near 5v) and logic low. (near 0v)

This quadrature waveform shows what you would see on the data lines (A and B) when you slowly turn the axis clockwise.



For example, if A is stuck low, the encoder will only see phase 1 or 2, never phase 3 or 4.
    Phase 3 looks like Phase 2 -- A = Low, B = Hgh.
    Phase 4 looks like Phase 1 -- A = Low, B = Low.

    Phase 1 to 2 = move mouse 1 step to the right.
    Phase 2 to 1 = move mouse 1 step to the left.


Scott

[thewumpus]

Solution: the OptiPac had blown spinner input ports.  Replaced it with a new USB OptiPac and everything works great now.  Thanks guys!