help - erratic behaviour from new Happ trackball

[QuixoteQuest]

We have a new arcade cabinet as of Christmas. Everything has worked fine. A problem has appeared re: the Happ 3" USB trackball. We've had no funny signs from it up till today. Just good, reliable function.

My son started noticing funny behavior from the trackball today--told me it wasn't staying straight when he rolled it vertically. Putts in Golden Tee are behaving strangely. Drives don't seem to be going as straight as they once were. When I got home I took a look at it. It did seem to be tracking a little weird when spun, but it really got weird when I ran games easier to test by: both Centipede and Millipede. When moving the trackball alone the little gun tracks reasonably fine within the "trackball active zone" but as soon as you press the fire button it starts bouncing up erratically toward the top area of the zone. Goes as far vertical as it can while shooting then bounces back down as soon as you stop firing. If I move and shoot while using the joystick it plays just as normal. But switch back over to controlling via the trackball while shooting and the erratic vertical bounce starts again.

I've played these games since owning and this is strange behavior, indeed. They were working before.

I lifted open the CP and the only thing that seemed a little odd is the button nuts had come quite loose on several of the P1 cluster buttons, including the primary button 1. I tightened them all back but it is still behaving the same. So that was obviously not the problem.

I've uninstalled in the Devices Manager and unplugged/replugged the USB connection. I've restarted the computer, too. It's all still behaving the same. Does anyone have any idea what is going on?

Thanks!

[Kaytrim]

I had the same problem with spinners.  The issue is the configuration in MAME.  by default it accepts both joystick and mouse input.  You need to go into the configuration menus in MAME and set the trackball and other mouse type controls to use mouse input only.  Once that is fixed you will no longer have an issue with the bad tracking you are experiencing.

[QuixoteQuest]

Thanks-- that did it. I installed a new master config file then went back in and set it up. Working fine now. My son or his friends must have got into the configs while they were playing.

As they say in Scooby-Doo: If it hadn't been for those darn meddling kids. . .

[rdowdy95]

Now when I get my trackball and spinner ready to go do I do this in each of the game configs that use trackball or mouse? Or is there a master config somewhere? If there is how do I get to it?  I use command line version of Mame .110.