Road Blasters Controller hack

[allroy1975]

I'm hoping this is a stupid windows 7 or configuration issue of some sort....

I haven't posted about restoring this Road Blasters cab in about 4 or 5 years, and I've gotten even lazier since then.  I decided to mame the cab because I just don't feel like troubleshooting all the things that COULD be a problem with it.

Anyway, seemed to me that one of the biggest challenges would be making the yoke controller work.  It's got a little eye based (like an old ball mouse) thing that sees the turning and registers with the game.  I have an old USB ball mouse that I decided to sacrifice to try to make this as easy as possible.

I have the mouse hacked into the controller.  It moves my mouse cursor left and right like it should, but it seems to move more quickly or further right or left depending on how fast I turn the wheel and in MAME by the time I get to ...say the end of level 2 the whole thing is so wonky I have to keep the wheel jacked all the way to the left or right to keep it going straight. 

I did 0 research on this...just took the mouse apart and held it up to the wheel.  I could get it registering movement, so I went from there.  Created a small thing so it could be mounted and then started playing with it.  Quite frankly I'm surprised I could get it to work at all.

Any suggestions?

[Havok]

Looks like the holes on the wheel are too large for what the mouse is expecting to measure for gaps in the light. You may be able to compensate in Mame by adjusting the dial sensitivity under analog controls when pressing Tab in a game.

[allroy1975]

Geez...this is totally typical of me.  I'm trying to reinvent the wheel.  Steering wheel that is...

you were right, the mouse optic didn't like the Atari encoder wheel.

Found this page:
http://www.zumbrovalley.net/readpost.php?artid=1

Loads of words there....but ultimately let me to:
http://www.zumbrovalley.net/ArcadeOptics/trackball/
 
AMAZINGLY easy to simply hack into where the existing IR Optic stuff is and jump it to a Happ/Tatio/Atari Optic stuff.  There's really just 4 wires, input, +5v, Ground, input.

Once I knew that it was just a matter of figuring out if the little Atari board was wired the same as a Happ board.  Turns out...it is!  Same Pins doing the same thing.  Input, +5, G, Input.

Anyway.  Once it was done, I could tell right away that the data it was getting was MUCH smoother than what I had before rigged up with the Mouse optics looking at the Atari encoder wheel.  The mouse moved across the screen SOOO smoothly.  Really exited, I fired up MAME -roadblst -mouse.

OMG!!!!  I don't want to say the game was "easy"..but compared to what I had been dealing with...I felt like I was cheating!!!

Now I gotta find where the mouse buttons are and wire them in.  Then figure out if there's a cheaper way than an a-pac to interface a POT (the pedal is a potentiometer)....I'm thinking maybe the scroll wheel will work from the mouse.  Seems that that's a possibility....but not sure yet.  Anyway, hopefully this post will help some other stooge who likes making things too hard on themselves. 

woo hoo!

[Havok]

The AKI board would work for the pot (and buttons for that matter), and it's not too much:

http://bspeclabs.com/Store/product_info.php?products_id=31&osCsid=hgvc0jq0p1fjj0kc0nr6d8fia1

[allroy1975]

The AKI board would work for the pot (and buttons for that matter), and it's not too much:

http://bspeclabs.com/Store/product_info.php?products_id=31&osCsid=hgvc0jq0p1fjj0kc0nr6d8fia1

Guess I should have said I found something.  I had a bunch of old xbox controllers laying around my house.  Hacked that to USB.  The Xbox usb driver allows you to "map" certain buttons to other stuff I guess.  I took the Right trigger (I think....) it's button 12.  On/Off.  but..I mapped it to a "slider".  Then using the windows Joystick calibration tool, calibrated it so it knows when the pedal isn't pressed, or it's pressed some or all the way.  seems really sensitive.  Like it should be.

So thanks for the advise on that thing..and it's not too expensive..but it's not as cheap as an old Xbox joystick I had laying around the house.  With the Mouse hack and the xbox hack...I ended up spending $0 on the interface of the original controls to the pc.  w00t!