Wahooo! StarWars Yoke is Finally Available

[dag2000]

 Just FYI,

[Kremmit]

Yes.. but if you use gears with too fine of a tooth, they have a higher degree of stripping out and breaking teeth.  Esp with a controller that will be moved very swiftly and with force.   Fine tooth gears are fine for something like clocks..ect.  But for an arcade controller, you want larger thicker tooth gears to be able to withstand the forces.   Also... fine tooth gears will be thinner and so if they get moved arround to the left or right a hair, they may fail.  The tolerances for accuracy has to be very good in the assembly that uses a fine gear system.  Finer the gears.. the more resistence you will get as well. (greater friction)
And finally... finding a fine tooth geat with a hole big enough for a standard arcade pot will not be easy... even if one exists.   

Larger teeth are stronger, true, but as you pointed out, the material makes a difference there, too.  I doubt that gear manufacturers are forced to make gears narrower as the teeth get finer.  I doubt that center hole size is determined by how fine the teeth are, either.  Maybe we should wait until we can all see the actual gears Charlie uses before we tell everyone what's wrong with them.

As to Spy Hunter, it seems odd that Midway would spend the extra $$ on a button assembly instead of a lamp, and on running wires to the button, and in providing a place on the PCB for the wires to go to, if they weren't going to do anything with the input from the button.  But I don't have a Spy Hunter machine, or any good way to test it out, so I'll have to defer to you there.

[Xiaou2]

 Again.. the gears are based on mechanics.   A thin gear with fine teeth needs to be in a mechanism of uperior tolerances.  If the assembly even shifted 1mm, it could slip and strip the teeth (if thats about how fine the tooth was)    Even If they were metal.. they wouldnt hold up to that.     Since most fine gears are used in small assemblies, you will notice that they have small center holes.  Why use a monster shaft to drive a small thin gear?   Anyway... I took appart nearly every toy I had when I was a kid.. and later in life, worked as a arcade manager/repair guy...  I learned a lot about how mechanics work, and why things are made certain ways.

 As for the Spy Hunter Van button... I made one mistake.   There is one use for it.   To start the game.   Opps  : )   Other than that, its just a flasing deco.   For mame, you can map the game start to any of the other buttons  (like oil+start), and there should be no problems.

 

[Tiger-Heli]

OK, I went to check and see of the weapons van button triggered a blinking scroll lock on the keyboard, it didn't.  IF it did I thought it might be a cool retrofit for someone to do if they also used a GameCab driver board, but no dice.  It was worth the attempt and I also got in a good 20 minutes of Spy Hunter, then Some Stun Runner (I'm drifting from the point here  )

Charlie,

I think if g.litter (sp?) gets his code ironed out, you will be able to add a blinking scroll lock to MAME for the weapons van (or if someone feels up to it, they should submit a fix to MAMEdev).  So you might want to keep that retrofit option open.