Wiring Leland spring joysticks

[Brogner]

Hello all, I've seen this question asked but not answered.  I have a couple of the spring joysticks used in world series, John Elway quarterback, and other Leland games.  would like to incorporate them into my cp.  I've been trying to hook them up to an optipac but no luck.    Anyone know how to wire these or have any examples to go by.  Havent seen any on BYOAC yet. Would appreciate any help.

Brogner

[kspiff]

I believe that the Leland spring joys use potentiometers.  The Opti-Pac is a device for connecting [certain] optics boards (like in a mouse or trackball; the devices that read the little notched discs).  To rig up a joystick with potentiometers, you may be able to use Jude's Star Wars yoke hack as an example (or any article on hacking a pot or analog joystick to connect to a gameport) or perhaps 1UP's Dual Strike USB hack.

You'll probably have to change the potentiometers on the joys either way.

Oh.. and btw.. are these normal analog joysticks with 2 pots or single axis with 1 pot?  Had always been curious, seems like they are single..

[Lilwolf]

They are 5k pots (not that I know from experience.  But when I was looking for arcade analog controllers, my ebay search had 5kpots and these would come up all the time).

So the 1up hack will be your best bet.

[Brogner]

Thanks for the info guys, will check out 1ups hack.  Kspiff, it does have 2 pots on the joystick. 1 for each axis.  Thats why I was hoping the optipac would work on it because of the X&Y control. So glad  BYOAC is here to the rescue!!    

[metzer]

I've had great luck hacking a Logitech Wingman for use with these Leland sticks.  The pots fit perfectly.  This is just the basic Wingman, which you can find on Ebay easily for a buck or so.  Problem is, some of these sticks have threaded pots (which fit nice and securely) and some don't (which fit loosely and would probably require some glue to stay put).  It took me four purchases to get two sticks with the threaded pots.  Sort of a Russian Roulette.  

I like hacking these sticks because they are VERY easy to take apart and just use the existing cable to the game port.  No soldering, etc.  The Leland sticks are also very easy to take apart, pull off the pots, and replace with the new pots from the Wingman.  Just hook up to the game port, calibrate, and away you go.  

I'm in the final stages of securing mine to my attachable/optional control panel that has two of these sticks, another analog stick for Food Fight, two LS-30's for Ikari Warriors, and a homemade Star Wars yoke (not pretty but gets the job done).  btw, I used the handles from these Wingman sticks to act as the handles for my yoke.  They don't look half bad.  Makes the homemade yoke extremely cheap in price.  After picking up a Microsoft Dual Strike cheap on EBay for hacking into the yoke, I'll bet I didn't put but $10-15 extra dollars into it.   I'll slap a picture out here one of these days if I get around to it.

Jim

[kspiff]

OMG!  So these really are 2-axis analog joysticks?  How do they feel?  Good tension and travel?

Reason I ask is -- as you probably already know -- these things are cheap and readily available..  would probably make a great analog (maybe even dual for a console/2P setup)

[Brogner]

the tension is good on the sticks but they would make lousy joysticks for anything else.  The stick itself is stuck in the "north" position (using n,s,e,w) as a reference. I guess this is where the x or y axis is at 0 and the pots work from there.  I've noticed a couple of the newer arcade games out now uses these  larger versions in them. Hopefuly when these get emulated I will be able to use them there. videoconnect.com raised these to $20 a couple months ago.  I was able to get 2 for that price before they raised them.

[u_rebelscum]

Hopefuly when these get emulated I will be able to use them there.

If the computer sees them as analog joysticks (ie: you hack the hardware and install standard drivers), they should work great in mame.

[kspiff]

I think he meant when they emulate the newer games that use that joystick/analog joysticks.

[u_rebelscum]

I think he meant when they emulate the newer games that use that joystick/analog joysticks.

D'oh!!  

[botez]

Question on this old topic - which Wingman are you hacking -- there are tons of different gamepads and joysticks that now go by that name.

If anyone has a writeup on how to do this hack or any advice to offer- I'd love to see it as I'm pretty terrible at these kind of things.

Thanks

Troy

[jerryjanis]

I wired up 2 Leland spring analog joysticks using 1-Up's hack, using the MS SideWinder Dual Strike.  It was very easy, and it meant that I could use the original pots from the arcade joystick.

Here's a picture of the setup:


Using 1-Up's instructions, the hack was almost too easy.  It was very straightforward, so I won't try to complicate it by explaining it myself.  If you run into any questions, though let me know and I can help you out.  

I ended up getting several of the Sidewinder Dual Strikes for around $12 shipped apiece I think (ebay).

[JayTea]

This is an old topic...new question -
I have succesfully hacked a dual strike to a leland stick (ala john elway QB).
When I use the Dual strike test program, everything works and reacts as it should.


 Problem is I can't seem to get Mame to work with the stick correctly (sometimes the stick moves, sometimes it doesn't, when I release the ball isn't thrown...etc) ...anyone else had any toubles with this?  I just wanna play John Elway QB....!!! 

Thanks in advance.
JT

[Brogner]

Wish I could provide some usefull input to this since I started it 3 years ago! If I'm not mistaken, you can change the x y settings in mame.  You may be able to adjust the sensitivity of the stick by doing this.  If your using mame32 you can do this by hitting tab and selecting analog joysticks or something like that.  I've been able to get a trackball to work somewhat decently with Kickman doing this.  I kind of forgot about doing this because I bought a world series and gave up on the mameing of the sticks.

[jerryjanis]

Hmm...  It's been a while since I have used the Leland sticks.  I never tried them with the football game, only the baseball games (wseries is one of them).  You might try it with wseries and see if you can get it to work in that game.  In order for wseries to work, I had to remap the directions in Mame (that was many many Mame versions ago).  If it works in wseries, but not in the football games, then maybe the driver isn't correct and would need to be updated.

Jake

BTW here's a mention of the Leland stick from the Mametesters site:

I rigged up the controls for these games to my computer in my Mame cab. With a little bit of control mapping the controls work perfectly. It will always be a bug if you are trying to use a regular joystick. The "batting" control is an analog joystick placed on it's side so if you used an ordinary PC joystick you would move "left/right" to aim "up/down" and "forward/back" to swing the bat. The other problem is that the joysticks are spring-loaded so that the resting position is forward instead of being centered like a PC joystick.

So, I mean, you can play it with a PC joystick, but it's going to feel like the driver was written by a clown when in fact, it works like the original arcade machine. The only issue if you are using the original controls is that the directions need to be remapped.
- jerryjanis

[JayTea]

You guys are the bomb...Turns out on JE QB I had to adjust the sensitivity to 220% and the speed to 200 to get a playable game - but all is good now.  I have JEQB!!!  The original  mapping has the game joystick in sync with the analog stick...which makes no sense to me.  Had to re-map P1 to just up,down,left,right, and then the AD stick X/Y to the leland stick only (original map had U/D/L/R and AD stick X, Y combined in one joystick)

[jerryjanis]

Awesome!  Nice work!  I wonder if you're now the first person to properly Mame JEQB.

I got my wseries sticks sort of by mistake.  I made a ridiculously low bid on a wseries control panel on Ebay, and I ended up winning it for a penny (plus shoping of course).

[u_rebelscum]

You guys are the bomb...Turns out on JE QB I had to adjust the sensitivity to 220% and the speed to 200 to get a playable game - but all is good now.  I have JEQB!!! 

Interesting.  I'll test my computer tonight (hopefully) and see if I need to set the values as high as you do.  Just to be clear, you adjusted player 1 AD_STICK's sensitivity to 220%, and keydelta and centerdelta to 200?  (Or are you using an older mame before centerdelta came up?)  Or are you talking about a different "speed"?

The original  mapping has the game joystick in sync with the analog stick...which makes no sense to me.  Had to re-map P1 to just up,down,left,right, and then the AD stick X/Y to the leland stick only (original map had U/D/L/R and AD stick X, Y combined in one joystick)

FWIW, here's what's going on.  Since most games only have an 8-way or (exclusive) an AD_stick (analog stick), not both, mame's default mapping is to map your physical joystick to both "8-way" and "ad_stick" type inputs.  This means the few games that have both 8-way & ad_stick need to be remapped like you did.

[u_rebelscum]

Turns out on JE QB I had to adjust the sensitivity to 220% and the speed to 200 to get a playable game - but all is good now. ....  Had to re-map ... the AD stick X/Y to the leland stick only ...

I tested with a gamepad + rubberband on the analog stick, not a real springstick, but ... I didn't need to change the sensitivity or speed. 

Your needing to set the speed so high might mean you mapped the springstick to both the analog and the digital inputs for mame's AD_STICK?  (Or more likely, left the digital part as mame's default.)  I know you said you remapped, but it might have been "almost perfect"?

As a general rule, the analog springstick should be mapped to the analog part of the game's analog input port, not the two digital.  IOW, the tab, "Input (this game)" should look something like:

AD Stick X Analog     J1 X axis
AD Stick X Dec         None
AD Stick X Inc          None
AD Stick Y Analog     J1 Y axis
AD Stick X Dec         None
AD Stick X Inc          None
(And the same for player 3 AD Stick and your second springstick, if you have them.) 

The above example assumes your springstick is Joystick 1 in mame.  In general, you do not want "AD Stick X Dec   J1 X axis -" if J1 X axis is an analog axis.  This is because the "... Dec/Inc" is for using digital inputs (keyboard, 8-way sticks, etc) to simulate the analog signal that the game expects.  If you have an analog device (analog stick, spring stick, analog pedal, 270 steering wheel, etc), always map it to mame's "... analog" instead of the "... Dec/Inc" or mame will convert the original analog into digital on/off and then fake simulate an analog signal based on how long mame sees the (converted to) digital as ON plus the speed setting.

If this is the reason, you'll get better play if you remap correctly (and maybe reset the sensitivity to default).


Another possible reason for needing to set the sensitivity so high is that the springstick isn't calibrated properly in windows, and needs the extra sensitivity to "reach the ends".  See if the springstick is calibrated in windows.


Then again, I may also be way off.