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Author Topic: USB I/O gun boards - Friction and Target Terror Gold  (Read 1250 times)

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purbeast

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USB I/O gun boards - Friction and Target Terror Gold
« on: May 09, 2023, 12:05:00 pm »
I know that USB2GUN is the one board that I've seen discussed to get Happ guns working with a PC.

However I don't have one currently and I actually own Friction and Target Terror Gold board sets and I have their USB I/O boards that interface with the PC that runs the game.

I know TTG runs in Linux so I am not sure if that USB board would work or not, but I am not sure what OS is running Friction under the hood.

I was wondering if either of these USB boards work on a Windows PC running MAME. 

I currently have a MAME setup in my KI2 cabinet with a JPAC running GroovyMAME.  Is there a simple "test" I could do to try and hook these boards to that PC and just see if it picks up the guns?  I am not exactly sure how to hook these boards up to the PC either.  Is it just the USB cable?  Or that and the VGA cable pass through?  I'd have to look at how that would work with the JPAC as well since I know that is already doing something like that.

If anyone has any ideas, that would be great, thanks!

lilshawn

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Re: USB I/O gun boards - Friction and Target Terror Gold
« Reply #1 on: May 09, 2023, 12:50:40 pm »
AFAIK in my primitive testing, the friction game IO boards where using some kind of mouse emulation on them... in my testing you can blindly click around and shoot with a mouse. if there was a reticule you could change the mouse cursor to, you could just play it without guns.

it may be possible to use other mouse emulated gun devices with the game for use with LCD etc.

as for the other IO (service buttons, coin, etc) i believe they are straight up keyboard key strokes.

purbeast

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Re: USB I/O gun boards - Friction and Target Terror Gold
« Reply #2 on: May 09, 2023, 01:01:17 pm »
AFAIK in my primitive testing, the friction game IO boards where using some kind of mouse emulation on them... in my testing you can blindly click around and shoot with a mouse. if there was a reticule you could change the mouse cursor to, you could just play it without guns.

it may be possible to use other mouse emulated gun devices with the game for use with LCD etc.

as for the other IO (service buttons, coin, etc) i believe they are straight up keyboard key strokes.

Thanks for the reply.

What I am mainly asking about is can I use either of the TTG or Friction USB boards to get the Happ light gun games to work on a Windows PC running MAME (or whatever emulator) on my arcade CRT monitor.

I am not interested in hooking up a mouse and playing those games with a mouse or anything. 

Sorry if I wasn't making that clear. 

lilshawn

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Re: USB I/O gun boards - Friction and Target Terror Gold
« Reply #3 on: May 09, 2023, 02:26:21 pm »
yeah yeah... i was just saying that the IO boards are basically HID devices to windows and will emulate a mouse/keyboard. basically perfect compatibility as far as mame goes. (i think even the coin up and start are standard mame keyboard inputs.)

i'm not real familiar with how the alignment needs to go, since it's part of the game... but it's possible, i think.

don't quite remember exactly how it goes...... our friction machine died about 3 years ago after a flood in our shop, and i worked a while getting another computer up and going for it to run on, then about 6 month later one of the gun inputs stopped working, so we ended up scrapping the cabinet and storing any parts.

purbeast

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Re: USB I/O gun boards - Friction and Target Terror Gold
« Reply #4 on: May 12, 2023, 12:13:29 pm »
yeah yeah... i was just saying that the IO boards are basically HID devices to windows and will emulate a mouse/keyboard. basically perfect compatibility as far as mame goes. (i think even the coin up and start are standard mame keyboard inputs.)

i'm not real familiar with how the alignment needs to go, since it's part of the game... but it's possible, i think.

don't quite remember exactly how it goes...... our friction machine died about 3 years ago after a flood in our shop, and i worked a while getting another computer up and going for it to run on, then about 6 month later one of the gun inputs stopped working, so we ended up scrapping the cabinet and storing any parts.

Oh okay I see what you are saying.

When I have some time I will try to hook them up to the PC I have in my MAME machine and see if I can figure anything out.

purbeast

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Re: USB I/O gun boards - Friction and Target Terror Gold
« Reply #5 on: May 12, 2023, 04:04:21 pm »
I had a bit of time to play around with the Friction board and I put my results in the other thread.  Not sure which one to really continue with at this point lol.

Anyways it is here:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,166594.msg1765603.html#msg1765603

And turns out, at least for my use case, that Target Terror one won't work because I need a way to pass through the VGA from the JPAC to the PC, and there is no pass through on the TT one.

lilshawn

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Re: USB I/O gun boards - Friction and Target Terror Gold
« Reply #6 on: May 16, 2023, 09:58:02 am »
while i'm not 100% sure, at least I THINK... target terror software itself handled the monitor flash and timings, where the friction boards do a VGA passthrough that does the flashing.

purbeast

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Re: USB I/O gun boards - Friction and Target Terror Gold
« Reply #7 on: May 18, 2023, 01:50:59 pm »
Gotcha.

I am going to try testing the Friction one out a bit more on my NT monitor.

I am not getting it to work in my current light gun cabinet at all which has a WG monitor in it, and as I mentioned in the other thread, I am having issues with it working on there.  But I also had issues with Friction in general working on there, so I am wondering if it's all related to the IO board and that monitor.

lilshawn

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Re: USB I/O gun boards - Friction and Target Terror Gold
« Reply #8 on: May 18, 2023, 05:51:41 pm »
the IO board is apparently really sensitive to static zaps. I went through 2 boards on this machine, the one i currently have now in the parts bin has the player 1 gun input not working... the player 2 port seems to work still... so maybe try that out... but it wasn't going to work with the game setup we had (old house of the dead dual monitor setup) so the cabinet got trashed.

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Re: USB I/O gun boards - Friction and Target Terror Gold
« Reply #9 on: May 19, 2023, 07:44:39 am »
the IO board is apparently really sensitive to static zaps. I went through 2 boards on this machine, the one i currently have now in the parts bin has the player 1 gun input not working... the player 2 port seems to work still... so maybe try that out... but it wasn't going to work with the game setup we had (old house of the dead dual monitor setup) so the cabinet got trashed.

I tried both on both monitors and it works fine on the UG monitor but not the NT monitor, so there is definitely something monitor specific going on with it.