Wingman Warrior spinner mouse hack

[marco75]

I would like to use the Wingman Warrior in Windows XP, by running the signal from the spinner through a mouse circuit, giving me a X-axis with accelleration.

I can use the spinner in Windows 98 in conjunction with the Logitech drivers, but its movement is linear, which is worthless for games like Arkanoid or Tempest.

I have read that macgyv has used the wingman warrior spinner in conjunction with a mouse circuit for his arcade stick, and other people have found a way to do this as well.

I would like to know how this was done -- which pins of the WW circuit board are soldered to what pins on the mouse?
I'm thinking that the five cables on the WW spinner are analogous to the five pins on the mouse roller as shown in this picture:

[marco75]

While I wait for a reply, I'm continuing my investigation.

I have connected the serial mouse circuit to my PC and added is as a microsoft serial mouse. XP reports the device is working.

I then soldered 5 colored wires to the pins where the optical disk of the mouse used to be. The pins make a pattern like this:

1 gray       4 blue
2 brown    5 orange
3 green

Likewise, the pins surrounding the optical disk of the spinner make a pattern like this:

-\ 3    \ 6
1>-   5>-
-/ 4    / 7
2\ 

The spinner has 5 colored wires coming out of it, and going into the rest of the WW. I cut off the wires and plug them into a circuit matrix (may be called a 'breadboard'?)

If the pins on the two optical disks are analogous, I should be able to find a combination that would work through trial and error.

I have set up a table

spinner --  mouse

black         grey
green        blue
red            green
yellow       brown
blue          orange

result        nothing

Well, I hope I'm on the right track... this will keep me occupied for a while. 

[ddockery]

I hope you get this figured out.  I have a WW sitting in the closet I found a few weeks ago and was thinking of doing something similar myself.

[Kremmit]

I've got one I've always meant to have a go at as well.  Interested to see your progress.

Also of note- somebody else posted a while back that the pots inside that stick are 10k, same as arcade pots.  Can you verify that?  If they are, then that's an ideal stick for hacking analog arcade parts to.

[marco75]

Re: pots in stick -- They read 5 kOhm one way, and 40 kOhm the other (centered)... They are 3 pin pots, what's the correct way of measuring them?

Also, since there are 5 wires, there are 120 possible permutations to go through... I have only checked 12 so far... this might take me a while. Of course, if I actually understood how a mouse/spinner worked, I could probably eliminate some of those... Also, one of the wires on each is probably just +5 V, so if I only had 4 wires to check, that would make 24 permutations.

I will get back to the board as I keep at it.

[marco75]

I determined which pins on both circuits refer to signal ground. I systematically went through all 4! = 24 permutations, but none of them worked.

I will approach this project in a different manner -- I noticed there are guides on how to build a spinner from scratch; I just need to start reading from the part where You build a circuit and the cable, and go from there.