I won! Discs of Tron Arcade control Panel (ebay)

[Jake Stookey]

Oh, I am so pleased...  I've been wanting to play this game for real for a long time...  And it may still be a while before I can figure out how to get it to rock in Mame...  I'd given up on the game as an arcade controller, figuring I'd be better off just buying the whole arcade machine someday when I'm old and rich and have lots of space...  But this!  This is so friggin' cool.  What are the chances of finding this thing?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1079977728&r=0&t=0&showTutorial=0&ed=1015778731&indexURL=0&rd=1

[Mike]

Dang thats a lot of money you paid for that. I didn't even spend that much on my whole cabinet. Hope it works well for you.

[Vectoraster]

I think it's great that it landed in the hands of a MAME'r.  Tell Callan no more sushi on account of him not calling me (Ken) before he E-bayed it .  Probably paybacks for the STTNG thing we went through .  He'll know what you're talking about .

By the way, I was checking the Happs catalog and the new joystick with 1 button costs over $100 alone, so the price wasn't too bad either, considering you got the spinner, too.  Nice going.

[Jake Stookey]

Thanks!  Yeah, I mean, the price was outrageous...  I bet the other guy was half glad that he didn't have to shell out the dough for it.

Buying the controls new from Happ and whatnot would already be like $175 or so...  Believe me, I've looked into it!  And they still wouldn't cut it!  A regular spinner needs some crazy hacks (and I don't think that I'm that handy by any means).  There'll be nothing cooler in my mind than building the real thing into a desktop joystick.

(Awfully expensive, though for a 1-game joystick).

I just hope that the spinner is smooth, and it works well!

(And once it's built that I can play well enough that I can get to the stages where you move up and down - haven't seen them yet.)

I think it's great that it landed in the hands of a MAME'r.

[Lilwolf]

If I didn't have a wife and kids to suck my cash from me... I wouldn't have thought twice about it  

Should be an easy one to hack.  I wish I had the cash!  

DoT really stops at level 9 (was 9 right).  Without up and down, it's just not fun

[JustMichael]

When you get the control panel how about some dimensions like:
How wide is the knob?
How tall is the knob?
How wide the slotted disc?
How many holes does the slotted disc have?

Maybe then we can create our own versions.  Thanks if you post the dimensions.

[1UP]

A regular spinner needs some crazy hacks (and I don't think that I'm that handy by any means).

[Mike B]

Get rid of the opti board on the spinner and put a Happ optiboard on there.  I did that with my regular Tron spinner and everything works like a champ!

 I assume that the up and down of the spinner is just buttons, so you should be golden there as well :-)

 Good luck!  I wish My wife would have let me een bid on it!

[tron]

No need for happs optiboard, just use optical encoder of a normal mouse. For joystick+buttons use I-pac. I did it for Tron cp, which is now MAMEable. I also used original wiring too...damn easy. Now I'm playing using Dosmame, because of simple Dos mouse driver..which enables to kill all mouse acceleration and switch axes.
Exactly like original

Reading this site was helpful:
http://home.socal.rr.com/gsimpson/

[Stephen]

Cool. It sounds like a Disks of Tron spinner without the board WILL be useful... and I know where I can get one locally :-) I need to find out the price, though.

[jjanis]

Hey, you guys are the best...  I didn't even get the thing yet, and didn't have to ask, and already I know exactly how to get this thing working cheaply without any (forseeable) problems!  (Assuming that the up/down on the spinner map like a regular ol' button).

Thanks for the link!  http://home.socal.rr.com/gsimpson/

So I'll get a $10.00 Walmart mouse...  I have a hacked keyboard in a controller that works really well (It's almost overkill for the Tron controller) which I'm about to replace with the I-Pac anyway - It's supposed to be a 3/4 player add on to the Hot Rod, but the HotRod/Keyboard seem to conflict, when 4 players are going crazy on TMNT all at once.  Hopefully the I-Pac will let me either use them both linked together, or allow me to use both USB and PS-2 together at one time...  (Has anybody successfully used USB and PS-2 together at the same time?)

Anyway, thanks!

[jjanis]

Oh, man, I just noticed my other wildest dream...  Sold on ebay a little over a week ago!  Oh, MAN!

It's an arcade control panes for the game 720...  I love that game and would nearly kill to be able to reproduce it at home.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1078433175

I wonder if porting that to the PC would be possible?

[Lilwolf]

As for the 720... I've almost bid on one at least 10 times.  That one went for more then most.  I've passed up on just the stick for 30 bucks.   Sometimes you find them without the ocntroller board and thats when you can get them cheap (since you don't care).

why did I pass on them..

I don't know if I could get it to work with mame.  The mouse mame drivers don't seem to have the controls working well.  I don't think you could hack it to always point in the right direction.  

If you find another one, and bid/win.  Let us all know if you can get it to work.  I LOVE 720!  (I used to play it so much that my hands would hurt!)

[tron]

I don't think mouse hack works:
You would have to get sooo accurate settings...spinning 1 or 10 rounds would spin exactly 1 or 10. That could be possible with exact settings, but I've tried it using tronspinnermousehackwithoutacceleration, the problem is:

Often when you bump into objects, and fall, skater changes direction...If you were pointing "downwards"(with a spinner)before landing on knees....when you get up skater can be pointing in quite different direction compared to your previous spinner/joystickspinnerhack position.

Sorry to bring the bad news.

I wonder what would be the right approach for 720 hack...

But now my problem will be starwars hack, won the controller auction... Prepare for dual strike questions Lilwolf

[jjanis]

As for 720, I was thinking that since the controls have to be so darned precise, and that MAME handles the controls in it's own little way, one way to do it might be to go into the MAME code itself, and make your own private build to set up that one game to work properly for how your specific controller works.

I have no clue how tough that would be, and even then if it could be made to work right.  It would seem that a mouse hack wouldn't likely work, because the directions are so un-specific with a mouse hack.  It seems to me that it would definetly be impossible to avoid having it get out of synch with the direction of the little man on the screen.

I can't immediately picture the digital solution either, although...  I don't know anything about this stuff, just thinking out loud I guess.

It would be really interesting to hear if anybody has successfully gotten 720 to work properly with MAME!

[jjanis]

Oh, yeah...  Nice catch with the star wars controller!  It looks like it's in great condition.  I saw that last night, about 45 minutes before the auction ended.

I personally have enough projects on my hands right now!

[1UP]

But now my problem will be starwars hack, won the controller auction... Prepare for dual strike questions Lilwolf

Actually, I'm the one who pioneered the Dual Strike/Star Wars hack (when I went by rmfx) and I'll be glad to post a writeup on what I did, hopefully in the next few days.  It's pretty simple, you just need to know what wires go where.  I'll try to get a diagram of the board online.

[tron]

Actually, I'm the one who pioneered the Dual Strike/Star Wars hack (when I went by rmfx) and I'll be glad to post a writeup on what I did, hopefully in the next few days.

[tron]

...Dual strike is only USB?

[Lilwolf]

1UP, I'm probably going to go with the MDS soon.  (I'm hoping for an analog stick in the next few days).  

Anyway, I would love a good writeup on it.  

(and I do believe it is USB only)

[1UP]

I'm posting the Dual Strike writeup to another thread tonight.

[jerryjanis]

I have some information (JustMichael asked) about the dimensions of the Discs of Tron spinner.

I made a little web page with some information on it, including pictures to help with my questions, and with JustMichael's questions:

http://www.geocities.com/jstookey/joystick/spinnerdetail/dotron.html

I have a big nasty little question!

The joystick on the DOTron control panel has some awful Torx security screws on them.  I see that Happs sells several Torx wrenches, but I haven't a clue which one to choose!

The 'hole' for the screw is about 4mm wide, and the 'dot' in the middle is about 2mm wide.

http://www.happcontrols.com/joysticks/49004900.htm

Torx

[jerryjanis]

Aww man...  I exceeded my allotted amount of data transfer on my Geocities site just by testing it out!  &@!#$%in' free stuff...  Well, it says it'll be restored within an hour.

[1UP]

I have a big nasty little question!

The joystick on the DOTron control panel has some awful Torx security screws on them.

[jerryjanis]

Awesome...  You're a life saver.  At happs, those ---daisies--- charge like $5.00 apiece!  This is much better.  I just emailed Bob Roberts now, and I'll be trying to get them soon!  Thanks.