Spinners, your experiences?

[Warborg]

I was just wondering who out there has used the Oscar Model 1, or built a CHeep or Twistygrip spinner for their cabs?  I was just wondering how well the various methods work, as I am still trying to decide what I wish to do as far as my spinner goes...  It'll primarily be used to play Tempest/Tron, and possibly Arkanoid...

[JLR2000]

I have a Model 1 Oscar in my cab.  Oscar's spinners are great.  If you go to the OscarControls website, in the
Customer Installations section - mine is the first one.

I really recommend going with Oscar.  His products are good and he's a stand up guy.  He's helped me several times
with the installation and with other projects regarding stuff I didn't buy from him.

JLR2000

[Anonymously]

Yup go with Oscar.  Take it from me.  Tried to make my own spinner wasn't really successfull (for some reason it doesnt really feel like authentic) Then I decided to buy Oscar spinner and believe me it was worth every penny.  I should have bought an Oscar to begin with and save the time and money (bought and broke 4 mouse in the process).

Also it works great with Optipac.

[Smack]

Ditto to the above. I built my first spinner using the Twisty grip method. It worked fine for me. When I built my cocktail cab, I bought 2 oscar spinners for use with an optipac and they're great, a snap to mount to. That alone is worth it!

My 2 cents!

[RacerX]

I also have an Oscar spinner in my cab, and I love it.  It has a very smooth feel, and it works great.  

[dhansen]

Oscar spinners kick serious a** especially the Oscar Pro...But if you don't have the scratch, build my hard drive spinner.  The feel is very comparable to the Oscar.

http://www.doughansen.net/arcade/spinner.htm

Doug

[Jungle]

I've decided to go with an Oscar spinner, but I am having trouble deciding which model I need, the Model 1 or the Pro.

90% of the time the spinner will be used for Arkanoid or Tron, with some Tempest and others thrown in.  Is it worth upgrading to the Pro for this usage?

BTW, the MAME engraved spinner knobs looked great!

[dag2000]

Doug,

I love my hard drive spinner.  It was my first arcade hack. thanks for sharing!

-Dave

[ErikRuud]

I read the Twisty and Cheep spinner instructions.  Then I built my own spinner.  On my spinner I used two sets of bearings to remove any wobble in the shaft.  All of the hardware came from Ace, and the mouse came from Wal-Mart.  I used the encoder wheel templates from the Cheep spinner instructions.  I printed them out, glued them to a sheet of white styrene, and then cut them out with an exacto knife.

[dhansen]

I love my hard drive spinner.  It was my first arcade hack. thanks for sharing!

-Dave

No prob, it's fun making something from nothing...

Then I built my own spinner.  On my spinner I used two sets of bearings to remove any wobble in the shaft.

Cool, do you have any pics or documentation, I'd like to see this!

Doug

[ErikRuud]

I'll see if I can get the pictures taken this weekend.  

I used a pair of flanged ball bearings that I found at ace hardware.  I drilled a hole through my panel that was a tight fit around the non-flanged part of the bearing.  I put one bearing in from the top and one from the bottom.  A nut on the bottom side and the knob on the top hold the bearings in place.

[Chris]

I built a spinner from the TwistyGrip plans, and it works great!  The tricky part about building a spinner is finding a good knob, and now that Oscar sells custom MAME knobs, that's no longr a problem...

--Chris

[KevSteele]

I built a spinner from the TwistyGrip plans, and it works great!  The tricky part about building a spinner is finding a good knob, and now that Oscar sells custom MAME knobs, that's no longr a problem...

--Chris

I just got the Oscar aluminum knob with the engraved MAME logo -- really, really nice. Nice weight, neat looking engraved logo.

Mine had some surface abrasions, but nothing that a couple of seconds with some Brasso couldn't fix.

The solid aluminum knob from Oscar really improves the "feel" of spinner games, IMHO, and the MAME logo's just the icing on the cake.  A must have if you've got a spinner.

Kevin Steele