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| D_Harris:
--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on February 02, 2010, 05:12:11 pm --- --- Quote from: D_Harris on February 01, 2010, 09:42:30 pm --- --- Quote from: u_rebelscum on February 01, 2010, 03:05:50 pm ---Hacking mice used to be more common, before the optiwiz and other cheap encoders came out. --- End quote --- That's just it. There doesn't seem to be much of an advantage over a mouse. The Opti-Wiz doesn't support more buttons than a conventional mouse. --- Quote ---So the demand for "print your own encoder wheel" software also was higher (I can't google the one I knew about, though). --- End quote --- But since you still need a spinner with the Opti-Wiz as you would with a mouse pcb, I again don't see the advantage. --- End quote --- I'm not saying hacking is wrong or you shouldn't do it, just the fact that the number of people hacking mice has dropped drastically since I started into this field. (Hacking mice used to be a way more common topic here 5 years ago.) I'm guessing there are two major reasons that the optiwiz/optipac/u-hid/other optical encoder now are more popular are: the encoders are easier, and most mice don't use wheels anymore. "Open" spinners, with the encoder wheel visible, were very common until the "closed" tt2/spintrak/tt-hl/spintrak2 came out and mostly pushed the open ones off the board. You might be able to replace the wheels on the open spinners. Tornado (AFAIK) is the only one still in production (I thought the blackhawk was too, but its website is down, and its not showing on google anymore). But my point of my first post was that the demand for kits of optical encoder wheels is very small, partially due to that there are ways to make (print) you own. As for "encoder wheel kits", GGG has one booster kit for arcade trackballs; I don't know of any other simular kits (to GGG's or your suggested ones) out there (besides replacement, same as OEM, sets). --- End quote --- Yeah, mouse hacks were a common subject just after the turn of the century. But even then it seemed that not many did them as much as talked about them. If you get one of those cheaper encoders like the Opti-Wiz, you'll end up buying another anyway so you can use more controls on your panel, if you're like most here and require more than just three buttons and a spinner. P.S. I was just wondering if I can plug my Tornado into my MiniPAC. Darren Harris Staten Island, New York. |
| u_rebelscum:
--- Quote from: D_Harris on February 02, 2010, 07:27:38 pm ---P.S. I was just wondering if I can plug my Tornado into my MiniPAC. --- End quote --- I don't have a tornado, so please bear with my general answers. If the tornado has its own USB or PS/2 connection, not without hacking it. The MiniPac is looking for raw quadrature data from the sensors. so you'd need to hack it but the opposite as you'd hack a mouse: you'd use the tornado's sensors and cutout its cirsuits. But if it has its own usb or ps/2 connection why would you need to hock it to a minipac? So if it doesn't have its own encoder board, it should work with the minipac. |
| D_Harris:
--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on February 03, 2010, 05:12:06 pm --- --- Quote from: D_Harris on February 02, 2010, 07:27:38 pm ---P.S. I was just wondering if I can plug my Tornado into my MiniPAC. --- End quote --- I don't have a tornado, so please bear with my general answers. If the tornado has its own USB or PS/2 connection, not without hacking it. The MiniPac is looking for raw quadrature data from the sensors. so you'd need to hack it but the opposite as you'd hack a mouse: you'd use the tornado's sensors and cutout its cirsuits. But if it has its own usb or ps/2 connection why would you need to hock it to a minipac? So if it doesn't have its own encoder board, it should work with the minipac. --- End quote --- I'm not sure I understand what you wrote, but connecting the Tornado to the MiniPAC is so I can use more than three buttons when I need to play non-spinner games. And I'm assuming it is the same as a mouse, but with only two axis. So if I can plug a mouse into the MiniPAC, then the Tornado spinner should be the same. Darren Harris Staten Island, New York. |
| u_rebelscum:
I looked into the tornado, and it's usb (plugs directly into the computer). So it won't plug into the minipac without hacking. But why hook it to the minipac? The tornado supports 3 mouse buttons, the minipac 2 AFAIK. It won't make a difference if you have the tornado hooked directly to the PC (as long as the 2/3 mouse buttons are also hooked to the same device). The other buttons on the minipac are keyboard buttons, so it doesn't matter if you have to tornado attached on its own. :dunno Hmm, or do you also have a Trackball too? If you want to drag and drop with both TB & spinner with one set of mouse buttons, that might be a reason to hack the tornado. Otherwise you're wasting you time. |
| D_Harris:
--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on February 04, 2010, 02:55:01 pm ---I looked into the tornado, and it's usb (plugs directly into the computer). So it won't plug into the minipac without hacking. But why hook it to the minipac? The tornado supports 3 mouse buttons, the minipac 2 AFAIK. It won't make a difference if you have the tornado hooked directly to the PC (as long as the 2/3 mouse buttons are also hooked to the same device). The other buttons on the minipac are keyboard buttons, so it doesn't matter if you have to tornado attached on its own. :dunno Hmm, or do you also have a Trackball too? If you want to drag and drop with both TB & spinner with one set of mouse buttons, that might be a reason to hack the tornado. Otherwise you're wasting you time. --- End quote --- You lost me again. I have the PS/2 connection on my Tornado. And the MiniPAC would be for games with more controls(joystick or more than three buttons) when not playing the spinner games. I was just trying to figure out a way to get all that while only having to use a single connection from the control panel, which would be the USB connector from the MiniPAC. Darren Harris Staten Island, New York. |
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