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Complicated question about the Mini-Pac

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Avrus:


--- Quote from: Tiger-Heli on July 23, 2007, 02:42:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: AndyWarne on July 20, 2007, 04:58:13 pm ---The issue of the trackballs possibly getting swapped over is a good one to raise, but I don't think it would happen because I believe that DirectInput would keep the devices identified correctly by the port they are plugged into. I cannot guarantee this though as I have never tested that this is the case. Its not especially difficult to swap them over in Mame if that were to happen.

--- End quote ---
This has been mentioned a lot in the past on here.  I believe if you plug the mini-pac's into the same pair of USB ports (or a hub plugged into a single USB port), they can swap positions.  If you plug the mini-PAC's into different pairs of USB ports, (like a front panel and a rear panel motherboard connector) they will not.

(But I always only plug stuff in as I need it, so can't verify for certain myself).

--- End quote ---

The idea is to have 3 trackballs for games like Rampart, various sports games, etc.

I'll be posting my project soon because it sounds like I'm doing some stuff that hasn't been done before.

Paladin:

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but doesn't the Mini-Pac only allow one spinner/trackball to be active at a time?  This is to prevent someone messing up your game by spinning the trackball when you're playing a game with the spinner.  A quote from the Mini-Pac page on Ultimarc:
<b>The active control is auto-selected when one control is moved after a 10 second idle period.</b>

Seems to me that this would not work for your plans of using multiple spinners/trackballs at the same time in a game like Rampart.

Tiger-Heli:

Both the Mini-Pac and Opti-Pac do not allow the spinner and trackball to be active at the same time, however, both trackballs, or all 4-spinners (Opti-Pac) can be active, and I think there is a jumper setting on newer boards to disable this feature (not positive though).

This feature is much less useful, now that MAME maps mice individually as you could have the spinner and trackball as separate USB mice and without a sysmouse, only one of them would be used in a game.

u_rebelscum:


--- Quote from: Tiger-Heli on July 20, 2007, 07:27:17 am ---
--- Quote from: Avrus on July 20, 2007, 04:57:46 am ---First question -- Since the recent revision of MAME it now supports multiple 'mouse' interfaces.  Does that mean I can use one Opti-Pac board for two trackballs and use both trackballs in a game, eg:rampart.
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I believe so - it depends on how MAME sees the Opti-Pac (as one mouse or two separate ones).  I don't know for sure - You can do it with two Mini-Pac's.

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Yes, but mame has seen optipac as two mice (default) since around 0.105.

The only difference with 0.117u1 is mame now sees it as one mouse by default, but as two with the -multimouse option.

If you want three TBs, one optipac and one minipac = three mice (default for 0.105-0.117, but you need -multimouse with 0.117u1).

Avrus:


--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on July 24, 2007, 06:15:48 pm ---
--- Quote from: Tiger-Heli on July 20, 2007, 07:27:17 am ---
--- Quote from: Avrus on July 20, 2007, 04:57:46 am ---First question -- Since the recent revision of MAME it now supports multiple 'mouse' interfaces.  Does that mean I can use one Opti-Pac board for two trackballs and use both trackballs in a game, eg:rampart.
--- End quote ---
I believe so - it depends on how MAME sees the Opti-Pac (as one mouse or two separate ones).  I don't know for sure - You can do it with two Mini-Pac's.

--- End quote ---

Yes, but mame has seen optipac as two mice (default) since around 0.105.

The only difference with 0.117u1 is mame now sees it as one mouse by default, but as two with the -multimouse option.

If you want three TBs, one optipac and one minipac = three mice (default for 0.105-0.117, but you need -multimouse with 0.117u1).

--- End quote ---

And that's what I eventually figured.  So I ended up going 3 mini-PACS for 3 balls, 2 spinners and 4 joysticks.

Forging new ground!

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