Anybody here ever make a Major Havoc controller?

[Matthew Fisher]

Now that I've gone with swapping panels on my machine, I'm going all out and have decided to try to make a dedicated MH panel.  Has anyone here ever made a roller that they think worked better than a regular spinner?  If so, can you post pix, details, etc.  I looked around and didn't see any examples.  I was thinking I might start with a skateboard wheel...

I know Oscar controls was talking about this, but I understand he's suffering real-life syndrome ("RLS") at the moment...

[Lilwolf]

Oscar looked at it a long time ago.

Trouble ended up being, is doing it 'right' would have cost a LOT of money.

[ChadTower]

I don't even think the original roller played better than a good Tempest spinner anyway.

[Matthew Fisher]

Great ideas!

[Kremmit]

I don't even think the original roller played better than a good Tempest spinner anyway.

Oh, yes, it did.  If you grew up playing with one, a spinner just doesn't cut it.

NoOne=NBA made a homebrew roller once upon a time.

There used to be a repro available here:
http://www.basementarcade.com/arcade/4sale/forsale.html
but he's been sold out for years, and I don't believe he plans to make any more.

That cylindrical encoder isn't a bad idea as such, but it would have to be of much smaller diameter than the roller in order to stay below the control panel.  A lot of 360 wheels already have cylindrical encoders and the optics to match if you try to go that route.

[RayB]

Oh, yes, it did.

[ChadTower]

You can't get your dog back by building a spinner.

[Lilwolf]

 

You can't get your dog back by building a spinner.

[Lilwolf]

The encoder wheel is the vertical line.  End encoder itself is green (with two blips for the optics, and some others.

You could get away with adding the encoder out of the end.  But I think this would be easier since you could use standard encoder wheel.   But this was just a basic idea.  I could see doing it the way you mentioned for sure.  Basically the parts you have around and the parts you want to try and make

I considered making this a few years ago... too many projects... Not enought time... too many good games to play in the meantime

Lilwolf, in your picture, I guess the encoder would maybe go where the light grey is.

[Matthew Fisher]

Ah, I recall seeing basement arcade's roller before.  Now that I see it again, I'm liking it more and more...  I wouldn't be able to fabricate a frame like that one, but I do have a track ball I can raid for rollers, bearings, encoder wheel, optical bd, etc.  Why not mount the two TB rollers and bearings in some sort of frame and set the skate wheel on top, weighted of course and held in place somehow.  Perhaps I can come up with something.  If I do, I'll certainly post something about it...

[southpaw13]

Just my two cents from watching mythbusters....keep it simple.  Putting the roller on top of the cylinders and then figuring out how to fold down the roller sounds complicated....

[Rocky]

I wonder if anyone has tried using a "Kick" controller. It's a trackball that only rotates on one axis. It should have similar feel to a MH controller. It would be a sphere instead of a cylinder.

I guess if you want a dedicated MH controller, nothing else will do.

And I used to play on a dedicated maching back in my college days and it is much better than the spinner conversions.

[Matthew Fisher]

Some of you may have noticed this (Kremmit, did I see you bidding?):

http://cgi.ebay.com/NOS-Atari-MAJOR-HAVOC-Trackball-Roller-Controller_W0QQitemZ6242380692QQcategoryZ13718QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

  

So, is $125 really all that high for an exact repro?  I'm guessing (hoping) that the winner probably will use it in a real MH, but wouldn't all but the most anal-retentive prefectionists buy a drop-in repro for a restoration if it were available, not to mention all the MAMErs that would buy one?  I'm not saying a repro would sell hundreds of units, but dozens seems like a reasonable estimate.  Then again, I would have thought that Gamecab's yoke would sell a lot better than it apparently did... 

[ChadTower]

A lot of people SAY they will buy something.  When the item is finally available and it's time to lay cash on the table, though, most never do it.

[PetitMorte]

From the pictures on the auction, it looks like the mechanism is MUCH more simple than the stuff you guys have above.

The green is the wheel, with it's axle.  The wheel spins on its axle, and in doing so, spins the roller attached to the encoder, just like a trackball would.

This thing isn't a spinner, it's a 1-axis trackball.

Just take your skateboard wheel, and put it up against your trackball roller.  add a light, bada-bing.

[ChadTower]

Until the friction wears down the rubber wheel even a fraction of an inch and it no longer makes solid contact with that second axle.

[PetitMorte]

Well, that's assuming that the wheel's axle is fixed in place.

If you let the axel of the wheel "float" up and down a bit, that wouldn't happen... like a trackball sitting on the rollers.  Trackballs get worn down by friction, but since they basically just sit on the rollers anyway, they're pretty much always in contact.  ... you couldn't let the roller float... that might pull the optical wheel out of the sensor.

And the wear on the wheel itself is going to be relatively minimal.  Compare the abuse that the wheel would get on a control panel to the abuse it would get supporting a 150lb kid as he rolls over asphalt and concrete.  They might just not expect to have enough wear on the wheelto have it disconnect from the roller.

The pics from the auction show the optical wheel off to the side of the control wheel, right about where a roller would contact the control wheel.  Unless there's some gearing being done inside the housing that we can't see, the track-ball thing is still the simplest set-up.

[ahofle]

Looks like you could use a roll of clear packing tape for the roller part. 

[Witchboard]

Looks like you could use a roll of clear packing tape for the roller part.

[pogo]

Here's the exploded assembly detail from the manual.  Might help you figure out how to make one.

[spriggy]

Some of you may have noticed this (Kremmit, did I see you bidding?):

http://cgi.ebay.com/NOS-Atari-MAJOR-HAVOC-Trackball-Roller-Controller_W0QQitemZ6242380692QQcategoryZ13718QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

   ...

Sold: US $610.00       I need some smelling salts...stacked!!

[Kremmit]

I tried the Kick(man) roller already.  The problem with using a Kick(man) roller is that the encoder wheel only has like 13 teeth, and sits on a shaft that runs through the middle of the ball, so that one full revolution of the ball passes 13 teeth through the optics.  The MH roller has a 24 tooth wheel, and it's attached to that small-diameter metal roller, that gets turned by the large-diameter green plastic roller.  The diameter differential gives a gearing effect that causes a boatload of encoder teeth to pass through the optics for every turn of the roller.  You could just jack up MAME's sensetivity to compensate, but you'll find out you get bad backspin trouble if you do.  I did some MH testing doing the Opti-Wiz beta, and of the games I tried, it was the toughest to get playing right with no backspin. 

I sure wish Oscar had done his repros.