Control Wiring Choice to Make....Advice?

[f4phantomii]

OK...I've got an older (2-3 year old) 2-player IPAC.

Currently I have two 8-way Happ LS30 rotary joysticks with 3 buttons per player.

For Christmas I asked for an X-arcade 3" trackball.  They were out, but offered to sell my wife their 3" Trackball Mouse panel, complete with buttons and everything, for the same price.

This panel can also be used and is recognized as a regular 3-button PS2 or USB mouse.

I disassembled the X-arcade panel and removed the buttons and the trackball.

So here's by choice....I currently have the Player 1  buttons (1,2,3) wired to the IPAC.  I could  wire them back to the trackball instead, which would both give me some mouse buttons back as well as free up some inputs on the IPAC for other things.

My alternative is to leave the buttons as they are, wired to the IPAC, and install some small 16mm nearly flushmount pushbuttons as dedicated mouse buttons and wire them to the trackball.

Are there some other interesting things I can do?  What would you folks recommend?

-Michael

[Kaytrim]

How about some pics of your current CP so we have a sense of the space you have available. 

Another option is to wire the buttons to a switch first then to the IPAC and the trackball.  That way when the switches are in one position the buttons work with the joystick and when the switches are in the other position the buttons work with the trackball as mouse buttons.

[f4phantomii]

Here's the control panel....I've got a spot ready to add a 2nd trackball...if we're ever able to do that in Windows.

This is what I want it to be eventually....


And this is where it currently stands.....



It should be no big deal to switch to using the encoder built into the trackball since MAME typically has Mouse 1, 2, and 3 mapped to the same functions as LCTRL, LALT, and SPACE.

So it shouldn't make any difference.  It would just free up some inputs on the IPAC...which may be a good idea.

One thing I forgot to mention....the x-arcade trackball also came with a feature to let you hold down a button and restrict the motion of the trackball to a single axis for pinball and golf games.  I was thinking about hooking this feature up to a switch that I could turn on and off.  That way I could use the trackball as a poor man's spinner too.  But I think most games with a spinner ignore the vertical axis anyway.