Newbie Mouse-hack question.

[barranger]

I'm in the (very) early phase of creating my first CP.  I've decided that for my first go at it I'll be attempting a Golden Tee/ Golf CP.  After looking through the board and doing a few searches, I've come up with two questions:

1)  I've seen that many people have used MS Intellimouse hack for the TB.  Has anyone tried using the 5 button optical version of this mouse so that you can have 5 CP buttons connected to it? (From the look of things I'll only need the 5 buttons).

2)  I'll only ever need to have on CP (or cab for that matter); how hard it is to break down a CP and reuse the buttons, Joysticks, and TB?

Thanks a lot in advance and for creating this great resource of info.
Barranger

[Minwah]

1) When you say 'optical' I presume you mean the type with no ball?  These can't be easily hacked, afaik.

2) Sorry I don't understand what you mean...

[spystyle]

I'm not the authority on this one but I have the idea that people use machanical mice because of the "light chopper/encoder wheel" inside, an optical mouse is a laser device and the laser reads against a pattern, like the grain on your wooden desk, I think the laser has a hard time reading against smooth, non-patterned surfaces (like a trackball, or pool table ball)

As far as I know you take the guts out of your mouse and line up the encoders against the trackball's encoder wheels.

There are many tutorials on the matter, a google search of : trackball + "mouse hack"
should yeild many results, there are also many DIY spinner project tutorials out there, I think the most recent one here was the "bunny top"

There's always Ebay too, some sellers sell control panels that already have a trackball or spinner on them , sometimes as low as $25

an Ebay search of "control panel" in arcade catagory should yeild many results

Can you dig it?
Craig


Here are a few links on trackball to mouse hack :

http://www.mameworld.net/massive/How-to/Trackball_Hack/trackball_hack.html

http://mamewah.mameworld.net/mousehack.html

http://users.adelphia.net/~seanhat/arcade/mousehack.htm

[barranger]

Sorry for being stupid (not enough coffee yet) of course it can't be a optical mouse

Does anyone know if MS makes a 5 button non-optical mouse?  And if so has anyone hack it yet?  My real question was should the 4th and 5th buttons be any different to hack than the first three?

Thanks again,
Barranger

[spystyle]

There's always a keyboard or gamepad hack if you need more buttons than the mouse can supply.

I scanned pricewatch.com and all the 5 button mice were optical. The closest was a 4 button :
http://www.shentech.com/kemo4scmobus.html

perhapse the scroll could be hacked as button 5? or does it already count towords the 4 buttons...

[barranger]

There's always a keyboard or gamepad hack if you need more buttons than the mouse can supply

True but I figured if I already needed the mouse hack for the track ball and only needed 5 buttons.....

[Lilwolf]

quick note.

Oscar sells a prehacked mouse for 9 bucks or so.  I bought 3 mice and killed 2 trying to hack it.... Then bought a few from Oscar... Worth the price by FAR!

[Stingray]

My real question was should the 4th and 5th buttons be any different to hack than the first three?

No, they should be exactly the same.

-S

[Tahnok]

quick note.

Oscar sells a prehacked mouse for 9 bucks or so.  I bought 3 mice and killed 2 trying to hack it.... Then bought a few from Oscar... Worth the price by FAR!

True, mouse hacks can be a bit tough. But if you have done any prior electronic work on circuit boards they really aren't that hard. I got it first try and ended up not spending anything to get my trackball working (the mouse was just laying around).

[jerryjanis]

Last time I checked, the Mame code couldn't handle 5 mouse buttons.

In mame/src/windows/input.c there's a line:

for (button = 0; button < 4; button++)

which is only looking for mouse buttons 0, 1, 2, and 3.  It's quite possible that changing that 4 to a 5 would add the extra button, but I can't be certain about that without testing it.

Also, mouse buttons are a little bit more flaky than keyboard keys in Mame.  For example (last I checked), you can't remap mouse buttons while a game is paused because of the way that the mouse is restricted to a single window.  In addition, they're a little bit more complicated than a keyboard key because they can report "mouse button up" and "mouse button down".  They typically require 3 wires instead of the usual 2.

I guess what I'm getting at is that it not be worth all the extra trouble just to squeeze a few extra buttons into your cabinet.

[NoOne=NBA=]

I would second the "just buy the stuff from Oscar" suggestion.

I've used his mouse hacks on pretty much everything (spinners/trackballs/steering wheel/rollers), and NEVER had a problem with them on ANYTHING.
The time you save is worth way more than the money you'll spend.--especially if you have to BUY a mouse to hack in the first place.
It's a much better option than HOPING the mouse you bought will work with the optics on the trackball.

Couple that mouse hack with a quick gamepad hack, and you'll have more buttons than you need.

[Minwah]

Last time I checked, the Mame code couldn't handle 5 mouse buttons.

In mame/src/windows/input.c there's a line:

for (button = 0; button < 4; button++)

which is only looking for mouse buttons 0, 1, 2, and 3.  It's quite possible that changing that 4 to a 5 would add the extra button, but I can't be certain about that without testing it.

I know in adding my DirectInput( code, I found there are two mouse types you can use: 1 supports 4 buttons (0-3) and the other 8 buttons (0-7).  I couldn't get the 8-button type to work so I stuck with the 4 button type - I'd guess from what you say MAME does the same...

Personally I wouldn't use a 5 button mouse either, if only to be on the safe side.  Having done a mouse hack I would still agree with the others and say get one form Oscar.  The only downside for me is shipping to the UK.  

[barranger]

ok so it definately seems that the way to go is with oscar's pre hacked mouse (It'll cost me close to that just for the mouse, plus MMP Products seems to ship in canada for him)  So correct me if I'm wrong but it's the "USB interface with L/R mouse buttons" on this page.  I guess he doesn't do pre-hacked gamepads as well eh?

Thanks a million for everyone's help, off to do more research,
Barranger

[u_rebelscum]

Last time I checked, the Mame code couldn't handle 5 mouse buttons.

I found there are two mouse types you can use: 1 supports 4 buttons (0-3) and the other 8 buttons (0-7).  I couldn't get the 8-button type to work so I stuck with the 4 button type - I'd guess from what you say MAME does the same...

Yes, mame sets the mouse to use the struct with 4 buttons.  (in src/windows/input.c, line 831 in 0.86u4).

[NoOne=NBA=]

So correct me if I'm wrong but it's the "USB interface with L/R mouse buttons" on this page.  I guess he doesn't do pre-hacked gamepads as well eh?

That's the one you want.
If you don't need to do Windows navigation with the trackball, I wouldn't worry about connecting the mouse buttons though.
You COULD save a couple bucks and get the one without the button support if you KNOW you don't need them.

As mentioned earlier, (joystick buttons, keyboard encoder buttons, etc...) tend to work better with MAME than the mouse buttons do.

And I don't think Oscar sells gamepad hacks.
There might be somebody on the board who is though.
You might want to search the Buy/Sell/Trade forum.