Original Tempest Spinner with RetroPie? - which encoder do you use?

[benarcade]

I've been struggling with this problem now for a week - the Ultimarc Mini-PAC that I was using for MAME in Windows works with my Tempest spinner, but it doesn't work in Linux. Andy said he doesn't know why it doesn't work - and didn't have much else to say about it - but in the RetroPie forum, I've read others having a similar problem with this configuration.

Do any of you have an original Tempest spinner running in RetroPie? If so, what encoder are you using?

It's not a RetroPi/RetroArch config issue - it's recognized by the OS as a "mouse" but no signal is detected when spun - as you would expect from a "mouse".

Tx

[keilmillerjr]

Try using a common stable linux distro and see if it works. RetroPie is not the best example to declare something as being broken.

[benarcade]

Yeah - I tried that. Actually, I tried Raspi+RetroPie, Raspi+Stretch, PC+Mint (Ubuntu), and PC+Windows. It only works on the PC with Windows. Linux recognizes it when I plug it in and identifies both the Ultimarc keyboard and the "mouse". It shows up in /dev/input/ as mouse0. But when I move the spinner, there's no output detected. I plug it into Windows and it works fine. It's frustrating, because I've been stuck on this roadblock for a week and need to move on to RetroPie configuration.

This is a Mini-PAC from 2013, but I've read that others have had trouble with the I-PAC 2 getting the spinner to work in RetroPie (See this post on RetroPie.org).

[benarcade]

Following up on this - I was able to get the Mini-PAC working with RetroPie, and the only thing I can guess as to the solution was that I eventually plugged it in to the Pi as the ONLY controller, then later plugged in the keyboard. I'm able to use the spinner in Tempest, but I have yet to configure it for any other game yet.