Two trackballs on a cocktail controlling the same mouse?

[Jakobud]

I am in the process of designing a cocktail cabinet for a friend.  He wants a trackball on each end of the cocktail.  I was thinking about getting two USB trackballs from Happs... however, if each player has a USB trackball plugged in, do they both control the same mouse?  Any issues here?

Are going with USB trackballs better and easier and more reliable than going with normal trackballs + encoder board?

Regarding having trackballs at both ends of a cocktail, when you have cocktail mode on, that flips the axis of the mouse upside down too, right?  I just tried playing a game in cocktail mode on my upright cabinet and when it switches to player 2, the screen flips but the trackball doesnt control anything.  And when switching back to player 1, the trackball works again... why is this?

[whammoed]

This may be a good resource?
http://www.johnnyz.net/pacman_cocktail_project/HTML/pacman_fs.htm
I do know he responds to email.

[Smack]

I've got 2 wico ones with the oscar usb optipac running my own compile of Analog Mame.

The usb optipac and analogmame allows you to see each mouse independently from within mame.

I had to set the dipswitches in the games to cocktail so that things worked fine with the screen flip. You can assign the player controls to which ever mouse you want.

If you go the route with 2 usb trackballs and analog mame, you'll be fine. See if its cheaper to go optipac and 2 standard trackballs. my 2 cents.

On some games that don't have controls rigged up for a 2nd trackball, you can set analog mame to use the system mouse (That is any mouse that is hooked up.) The only prob with that is that you dont want the other player moving the ball cause it affects gameplay.

Word.

[patrickl]

I have a spinner, trackball (with mousehack) and mouse all hoked up to USB and they all act as the same mouse (in standard versions of MAME anyway). I guess that would be annoying on a 2 player cocktail becuase then player 2 could disrupt the game for player 1.

I also have the problem that my spinner only works for player 1 sometimes. I remember Cameltry doesn't work for the second player when I start with 2 players.

Perhaps I should give analog mame a try too.