Orientation of a trackball...

[pacmame]

hey again.
i have a compusa trackball that is disassembled and ready to be mounted inside my hotrodse (damn, im running out of room). anyways, the trackball would fit perfect if it was rotated 90deg, but then of course the pointer moves sideways is there a setting to change the orientation (either in windows or mame/mame32) ? im thinking about making its own "house" and attaching it to the front of the hotrodse, but i want to explore some other options first.

thanks.

[u_rebelscum]

hey again.
is there a setting to change the orientation (either in windows or mame/mame32) ?

Mame:Analog+ can do this with the -swtichaxes option (but only the windows version saves correctly).  Of course, this means that it won't be oriented correctly in windows desktop.

EMU+ (and optimame) did this too, but I heard it's .cfg files don't "work" with mame58.  You can find info on EMU+ at http://www.oscarcontrols.com on the spinner supoort page.

[Lilwolf]

Or you can just rotate your hotrod when using it...

just kidding.

btw, before you spend the time mounting it, make sure to use if for a bit.  I got a compusa crystal trackball for hacking and I could never get it to read fast enought to make it playable.  I finally put it on my wifes computer.  (trouble was when spinning it really fast it shows up that your going backwards).

before you hack, play with it.

[pacmame]

thanks all. this hotrodse isn't my final solution. i have 2 more hotrodse's and an arcadestick to mess with =) this first one is my guinea pig. trying this and that with it.
i haven't had any major problems with the trackball (plus its soooo much cheaper that happs). it took me some messing with the sensitivity settings in mame, but once it was figured out, centipede, millipede, etc. work great.
i like the idea of swapaxis, but with a little cutting and drilling in the dead center of the hotrodse, i can make it fit (and look nice) the right way.

[Jonathan_the_Red]

I believe most trackballs are heterosexual

What's your OS? I believe if you install IntelliPoint software (available from Microsoft, free download) it has a way to set the orientation of your pointing device. If memory serves, it just asks you to move the device in the direction you consider "up", and will set the orientation to that, so you could even have it at a weird angle if you were so inclined (no pun intended). May only work with Microsoft products though.

I have a hacked Crystal Trackball in my panel. Don't have the system up and running yet though so I don't know if it works. Sheesh, I hope it does.

How are you hacking yours? I just removed the circuit board from the case, routed out a nice deep area on the panel, and mounted the circuit board to the panel using nylon spacers.

[Peeper]

This may sound idiotic BUT:

Can you just clip and swap the X and Y axis wire pairs??

[Jonathan_the_Red]

Probably. But if you do, one of your axes may be backwards... that is, either left will be right or up will be down.

But I betcha swapping the leads would work just fine. There's always the "reverse axis" option in MAME. Might be an interesting thing to try.