Pole Position Steering Wheel to IPAC question

[heinekenlvr]

I'm ready to start my PP conversion. I picked up an Opti-Pac to use with my PP steering wheel assembly. I see that there is an optical board already on the steering wheel and remember reading on this forum somewhere that someone fried their IPAC by connecting it via the original optical board. Is it possible to connect the Opti-pac directly to the existing optical board or do I need to modify the original board? If it is possible, what is the pinout order on the original board??

[cw]

pull the  manual from here...
http://pdf.textfiles.com/manuals/ARCADE/
and check I dont recall...

For my PP mame conversion I just opened up a mouse and made a small bracket to line up the optics with the encoder wheel.  Its been working great for years now.

[ArtMAME]

I just took out the opto-sensor off a mouse PCB, soldered wires to the holes (don't forget the +5Vdc and Ground), put a proper connector on the wires, and connected it to the header pins of the PP optical board.  Works great.

Now, interfacing the shifter... that will be an ordeal... not as simple as it seems... I will let you dig for that one.

[cw]

shifter is easy... you can wire it to the mouse buttons or a gamepad hack.  just wire both buttons together and it will be fine.. 

[Minwah]

shifter is easy... you can wire it to the mouse buttons or a gamepad hack.  just wire both buttons together and it will be fine.. 

Easy to wire up, but many games in Mame don't handle shifters very well. Check out my build of Mame to take care of this (for 360 wheel games at least):

http://mamewah.mameworld.net/downloads.htm

And as for the original question, you *should* be able to connect up the original optics, BUT I think there are a few different type of optic boards.  I did it and it worked OK for my Pole Position wheel - if you can post a picture it would help.

Oh, and also, I'm sure this has come up before so try a search...I recall there being some pics of the optic boards posted in the past.

[heinekenlvr]

Thanks for the input. As I already had an Opti Pac I did not really want to use a mouse hack so after a little searching here I found this http://actionmush.com/pole_position/
I had a spare optical baord which I performed the surgery on this afternoon and hooked her up to the Opti-Pac and voila it works like a charm. As for the shifter problem, that will be my last issue to deal with but I read on MameWah that there is a recent download that fixes that too. Looks like I will be using MameWah as my frontend. Now onto the Apac for the gas pedal. I want the feel to be as authentic as possible. Thanks again.

[Minwah]

As for the shifter problem, that will be my last issue to deal with but I read on MameWah that there is a recent download that fixes that too. Looks like I will be using MameWah as my frontend.

Actually it is not Mamewah that fixes the shifter problem...I compiled a build of Mame specifically for 360deg wheel driving games - available from the Mamewah download page

[Ummon]

It ain't the shifter that's important in this game, but the throttle.