I am curious about this too. One advantage to hooking a spinner up to the mini-pac is if you have two optical devices (spinner and trackball) the mini-pac will disengage one optical device if you are using the other one. For example, if your playing tempest and are using the spinner, the trackball goes dead so you can hit it accidently and it won't disturb the game.
But recent versions of MAME map all mice independently, so if Tempest is mapped to the spinner (Mouse 2 X), moving the trackball (Mouse 1) will not have any effect regardless of interface.
Thanks Tiger-Heli, I'm uprgrading mame from an older version in the next couple weeks. I was unaware that MAME now mapped all optical devices independantly and therefore I was dependant on the minipac to do the job for me. I'll look into that, thank you.
No, no.
MAME may map devices indepandantly, but the
MiniPac does not. If you're running your TB and your spinner both through the same MiniPac, then as far as your computer and therefore MAME are concerned, there is only
one device present. So, MAME cannot map to the spinner separately from the trackball. In order for MAME to see them as separate devices, they would have to be:
a) hooked up to two totally separate interfaces (two MiniPacs, a MiniMac and a mouse hack, an Opti-Wiz and a MiniPac, etc.);
b) hooked up to a single interface that
appears to the computer as two mouse devices (OptiPac)
c) hooked up to a single interface that supports three independant mouse axes (Opti-Wiz)
If both the spinner and TB are hooked to a single MiniPac, then it will work as Juggle50 described.