The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls

Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: Jake Stookey on March 10, 2002, 09:22:27 am

Title: I won!  Discs of Tron Arcade control Panel (ebay)
Post by: Jake Stookey on March 10, 2002, 09:22:27 am
Oh, I am so pleased...  I've been wanting to play this game for real for a long time...  And it may still be a while before I can figure out how to get it to rock in Mame...  I'd given up on the game as an arcade controller, figuring I'd be better off just buying the whole arcade machine someday when I'm old and rich and have lots of space...  But this!  This is so friggin' cool.  What are the chances of finding this thing?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1079977728&r=0&t=0&showTutorial=0&ed=1015778731&indexURL=0&rd=1
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: Mike on March 10, 2002, 09:35:19 am
Dang thats a lot of money you paid for that. I didn't even spend that much on my whole cabinet. Hope it works well for you.
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: Vectoraster on March 10, 2002, 09:36:15 am
I think it's great that it landed in the hands of a MAME'r.  Tell Callan no more sushi on account of him not calling me (Ken) before he E-bayed it >:(.  Probably paybacks for the STTNG thing we went through ;D.  He'll know what you're talking about ;).

By the way, I was checking the Happs catalog and the new joystick with 1 button costs over $100 alone, so the price wasn't too bad either, considering you got the spinner, too.  Nice going.
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: Jake Stookey on March 10, 2002, 11:02:05 am
Thanks!  Yeah, I mean, the price was outrageous...  I bet the other guy was half glad that he didn't have to shell out the dough for it.

Buying the controls new from Happ and whatnot would already be like $175 or so...  Believe me, I've looked into it!  And they still wouldn't cut it!  A regular spinner needs some crazy hacks (and I don't think that I'm that handy by any means).  There'll be nothing cooler in my mind than building the real thing into a desktop joystick.

(Awfully expensive, though for a 1-game joystick).

I just hope that the spinner is smooth, and it works well!

(And once it's built that I can play well enough that I can get to the stages where you move up and down - haven't seen them yet.)

Quote
I think it's great that it landed in the hands of a MAME'r.
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: Lilwolf on March 10, 2002, 12:36:56 pm
If I didn't have a wife and kids to suck my cash from me... I wouldn't have thought twice about it  :D

Should be an easy one to hack.  I wish I had the cash!  

DoT really stops at level 9 (was 9 right).  Without up and down, it's just not fun
Title: Re: I won!  Discs of Tron Arcade control Panel (eb
Post by: JustMichael on March 10, 2002, 02:20:54 pm
When you get the control panel how about some dimensions like:
How wide is the knob?
How tall is the knob?
How wide the slotted disc?
How many holes does the slotted disc have?

Maybe then we can create our own versions.  Thanks if you post the dimensions.
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: 1UP on March 10, 2002, 03:54:04 pm
Quote
A regular spinner needs some crazy hacks (and I don't think that I'm that handy by any means).
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: Mike B on March 10, 2002, 08:20:58 pm
Get rid of the opti board on the spinner and put a Happ optiboard on there.  I did that with my regular Tron spinner and everything works like a champ!

 I assume that the up and down of the spinner is just buttons, so you should be golden there as well :-)

 Good luck!  I wish My wife would have let me een bid on it!
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: tron on March 12, 2002, 07:51:29 am
No need for happs optiboard, just use optical encoder of a normal mouse. For joystick+buttons use I-pac. I did it for Tron cp, which is now MAMEable. I also used original wiring too...damn easy. Now I'm playing using Dosmame, because of simple Dos mouse driver..which enables to kill all mouse acceleration and switch axes.
Exactly like original :o

Reading this site was helpful:
http://home.socal.rr.com/gsimpson/
Title: Re: I won!  Discs of Tron Arcade control Panel (eb
Post by: Stephen on March 12, 2002, 02:06:36 pm
Cool. It sounds like a Disks of Tron spinner without the board WILL be useful... and I know where I can get one locally :-) I need to find out the price, though.
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: jjanis on March 12, 2002, 05:06:18 pm
Hey, you guys are the best...  I didn't even get the thing yet, and didn't have to ask, and already I know exactly how to get this thing working cheaply without any (forseeable) problems!  (Assuming that the up/down on the spinner map like a regular ol' button).

Thanks for the link!  http://home.socal.rr.com/gsimpson/

So I'll get a $10.00 Walmart mouse...  I have a hacked keyboard in a controller that works really well (It's almost overkill for the Tron controller) which I'm about to replace with the I-Pac anyway - It's supposed to be a 3/4 player add on to the Hot Rod, but the HotRod/Keyboard seem to conflict, when 4 players are going crazy on TMNT all at once.  Hopefully the I-Pac will let me either use them both linked together, or allow me to use both USB and PS-2 together at one time...  (Has anybody successfully used USB and PS-2 together at the same time?)

Anyway, thanks!
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: jjanis on March 13, 2002, 01:44:30 pm
Oh, man, I just noticed my other wildest dream...  Sold on ebay a little over a week ago!  Oh, MAN!

It's an arcade control panes for the game 720...  I love that game and would nearly kill to be able to reproduce it at home.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1078433175

I wonder if porting that to the PC would be possible?
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: Lilwolf on March 13, 2002, 03:51:15 pm
As for the 720... I've almost bid on one at least 10 times.  That one went for more then most.  I've passed up on just the stick for 30 bucks.   Sometimes you find them without the ocntroller board and thats when you can get them cheap (since you don't care).

why did I pass on them..

I don't know if I could get it to work with mame.  The mouse mame drivers don't seem to have the controls working well.  I don't think you could hack it to always point in the right direction.  

If you find another one, and bid/win.  Let us all know if you can get it to work.  I LOVE 720!  (I used to play it so much that my hands would hurt!)
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: tron on March 15, 2002, 01:56:43 am
I don't think mouse hack works:
You would have to get sooo accurate settings...spinning 1 or 10 rounds would spin exactly 1 or 10. That could be possible with exact settings, but I've tried it using tronspinnermousehackwithoutacceleration, the problem is:

Often when you bump into objects, and fall, skater changes direction...If you were pointing "downwards"(with a spinner)before landing on knees....when you get up skater can be pointing in quite different direction compared to your previous spinner/joystickspinnerhack position.

Sorry to bring the bad news.

I wonder what would be the right approach for 720 hack...???

But now my problem will be starwars hack, won the controller auction... Prepare for dual strike questions Lilwolf :)
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: jjanis on March 15, 2002, 08:15:50 am
As for 720, I was thinking that since the controls have to be so darned precise, and that MAME handles the controls in it's own little way, one way to do it might be to go into the MAME code itself, and make your own private build to set up that one game to work properly for how your specific controller works.

I have no clue how tough that would be, and even then if it could be made to work right.  It would seem that a mouse hack wouldn't likely work, because the directions are so un-specific with a mouse hack.  It seems to me that it would definetly be impossible to avoid having it get out of synch with the direction of the little man on the screen.

I can't immediately picture the digital solution either, although...  I don't know anything about this stuff, just thinking out loud I guess.

It would be really interesting to hear if anybody has successfully gotten 720 to work properly with MAME!
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: jjanis on March 15, 2002, 08:21:41 am
Oh, yeah...  Nice catch with the star wars controller!  It looks like it's in great condition.  I saw that last night, about 45 minutes before the auction ended.

I personally have enough projects on my hands right now!
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: 1UP on March 16, 2002, 04:51:20 am
Quote
But now my problem will be starwars hack, won the controller auction... Prepare for dual strike questions Lilwolf :)


Actually, I'm the one who pioneered the Dual Strike/Star Wars hack (when I went by rmfx) and I'll be glad to post a writeup on what I did, hopefully in the next few days.  It's pretty simple, you just need to know what wires go where.  I'll try to get a diagram of the board online.
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: tron on March 19, 2002, 05:20:53 am
Quote


Actually, I'm the one who pioneered the Dual Strike/Star Wars hack (when I went by rmfx) and I'll be glad to post a writeup on what I did, hopefully in the next few days.
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: tron on March 19, 2002, 08:35:45 am
...Dual strike is only USB?
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: Lilwolf on March 19, 2002, 12:52:02 pm
1UP, I'm probably going to go with the MDS soon.  (I'm hoping for an analog stick in the next few days).  

Anyway, I would love a good writeup on it.  

(and I do believe it is USB only)
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: 1UP on March 20, 2002, 12:53:16 am
I'm posting the Dual Strike writeup to another thread tonight.
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: jerryjanis on April 01, 2002, 07:53:13 pm
I have some information (JustMichael asked) about the dimensions of the Discs of Tron spinner.

I made a little web page with some information on it, including pictures to help with my questions, and with JustMichael's questions:

http://www.geocities.com/jstookey/joystick/spinnerdetail/dotron.html

I have a big nasty little question!

The joystick on the DOTron control panel has some awful Torx security screws on them.  I see that Happs sells several Torx wrenches, but I haven't a clue which one to choose!

The 'hole' for the screw is about 4mm wide, and the 'dot' in the middle is about 2mm wide.

http://www.happcontrols.com/joysticks/49004900.htm

Torx
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: jerryjanis on April 01, 2002, 07:57:06 pm
Aww man...  I exceeded my allotted amount of data transfer on my Geocities site just by testing it out!  &@!#$%in' free stuff...  Well, it says it'll be restored within an hour.
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: 1UP on April 01, 2002, 11:15:35 pm
Quote

I have a big nasty little question!

The joystick on the DOTron control panel has some awful Torx security screws on them.
Title: Re: I won!
Post by: jerryjanis on April 02, 2002, 12:55:12 am
Awesome...  You're a life saver.  At happs, those ---daisies--- charge like $5.00 apiece!  This is much better.  I just emailed Bob Roberts now, and I'll be trying to get them soon!  Thanks.