USB2 required for U360 + buttons?

[NelsonPJ]

Do Ultramarc U360 joysticks running with the 8 button interface require USB2 for best performance with MAME?  Or will I be OK running USB1?

I'm in the process of building a MAME cabinet.  I've got an old 600MHz Pentium3 with 768 meg RAM, onboard video, and built-in USB1 ports.  After reading a lot of posts on this board, I decided to buy two Ultramarc U360 joysticks.  I decided to not use a keyboard encoder (this was my justification for buying $59 joysticks!) and decided to hook up 8 buttons to each joystick (6 player buttons, Start, Coin). 

The U360's were delivered yesterday and I wired up a temporary control panel.  In my initial tests (also running Mala as a front end with the U360 plugin) everything worked great!  U360 maps switching seemed to work perfectly fom 8-way to 4-way, etc.  Even the 4-way diagonal Q-Bert map worked first time!

However I did notice yesterday when checking out button operation with the Control Panel gamepad interface that button presses didn't seem to react very quickly.  Is this just an issue with the control panel interface (i.e the control panel interface reacts slowly) or should I be thinking about upgrading to USB2 by installing a USB2 PCI card?

I played a few games with MAME and everything seemed OK, but it's hard to tell if absolutely every button press was registered and sent correctly.  What got me thinking about this is that I read on Ultimarc's website: "The 24Mhz CPU and high-speed USB 2.0 interface on the Ultra-Stik 360 ensures top performance."  So does this mean USB 2.0 is required?

[Ginsu Victim]

Mine ran fine when I was using a USB 1.0 interface. I'm now using USB 2.0 and can't tell any difference.

[AndyWarne]

The Control Panel, Game Controllers button display is quite strange. It is very slow to respond on any game device, seems to be a feature of this display. Strangely, when looking at a USB bus analyzer of a device when running this app, the app constantly re-requests the devices descriptors. No idea why it does this.

Andy

[NelsonPJ]

 

Mine ran fine when I was using a USB 1.0 interface. I'm now using USB 2.0 and can't tell any difference.

Thanks for the feedback.  I'm trying not to spend any more money on this 10-year old computer!  I figure eventually I'll put a more modern PC in my cab and it will have USB2 built-in.

The Control Panel, Game Controllers button display is quite strange. It is very slow to respond on any game device, seems to be a feature of this display. Strangely, when looking at a USB bus analyzer of a device when running this app, the app constantly re-requests the devices descriptors. No idea why it does this.

Andy

That explains it.  I noticed later in the Mala options panel for "joystick" which shows button presses that my buttons seemed to react quickly, so I guess this is just an issue with the Windows control panel.

PS: The U360's are great!  My Ultimarc package arrived in the mail yesterday, and I immediately started building a "test" control panel!  I love the fact that the U360's "just work" in any game because of the remapping feature.  It makes it really easy for my kids to play games.  I had considered getting manually switchable 4-8 way joysticks (like the Mag Stik Pros) to save some money, but when I tried to explain this concept to my 6-year old, he just gave me a "huh?" expression.

Now to finish building my cab...