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Back after 7 years.. What's new??

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GGKoul:
I've been away for a long while.. but I recently pulled my old mame cab that's been sitting in storage for about 5 years out and I'm looking to get back in to the hobby... so what have I missed?  I see ultimarc is still selling basically the same stuff from 7+ years ago.. but is there anything "new" that I have to get??  And is there a steering wheel IO board available?

I will spend the next couple of days trying to chat up.. but its nice to be back! 

-GG :afro:

Felsir:
Hey, same here. I've been away for 7 years as well and now planning to get back to building a cab. In that timeframe Pixelhugger has finished his Mission Control cabinet  ;D

The biggest "new" thing as far as I can tell is that it's seems easier to illuminate the controls. The FAQ entry still points to some experiments done by Knievel.
I'm still trying to collect informations to create an illuminated control panel.

 

CheffoJeffo:
Wow -- look at the old timers!

Welcome back!

GGK -- SB has moved and, since you left, I don't think there have been many changes for encoding analog controls (except for possibly more hacks of console controls).

 :oldman

BadMouth:

--- Quote from: GGKoul on December 22, 2012, 06:23:33 pm ---I've been away for a long while.. but I recently pulled my old mame cab that's been sitting in storage for about 5 years out and I'm looking to get back in to the hobby... so what have I missed?  I see ultimarc is still selling basically the same stuff from 7+ years ago.. but is there anything "new" that I have to get??  And is there a steering wheel IO board available?

I will spend the next couple of days trying to chat up.. but its nice to be back! 

-GG :afro:

--- End quote ---

Check out the U-HID from Ultimarc.  It can be set up to work with any type of input (analog, optical, digital).  Outputs can even be set up.

As far as steering wheel I/O Board, the U-HID or A-Pac works if you aren't worried about force feedback.
If you want force feedback with a Sega Model 1 or 2 wheel and are good with building your own pcbs, this is the way to go:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=fr&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://www.gamoover.net/tuto/l2m2-interfacer-un-ffb-et-volant-sega-model-12-avec-un-pc-ou-une-playstation-23

If you have a Happ FFB setup, the best route is to get the immersion USB pcb used in PC based Global VR arcade machines (NASCAR, Need For Speed).  They are fairly new machines, so it's not easy to find a used one and Global VR now requires a core charge for a new one.

Most people with Happ wheels have hacked  Logitech wheels and used a servo amplifier for the FFB, but there is an issue where centering feedback must be turned way down to keep the wheel from bouncing itself back and forth trying to center itself.  Probably only 30% are happy with the results.  I think the kinks can be worked out of this, but haven't had time to mess with it in a long time.

Aganyte also made a PCB design for the Happ setup, but I don't know of anyone who has tried it, so I don't know if it suffers from the same issue.
http://www.gamoover.net/Forums/index.php?topic=20417.0

So, in short, there is no plug and play solution.  The immersion pcb comes close, but it still requires you to figure out what pins do what and doesn't have the logitech software which allows you to tweak things on a per exe basis.  It also does not have centering feedback present for games that don't have ffb.

More info in the link in my sig.

brad808:

--- Quote from: BadMouth on December 26, 2012, 09:08:03 am ---Most people with Happ wheels have hacked  Logitech wheels and used a servo amplifier for the FFB, but there is an issue where centering feedback must be turned way down to keep the wheel from bouncing itself back and forth trying to center itself.  Probably only 30% are happy with the results.  I think the kinks can be worked out of this, but haven't had time to mess with it in a long time.

--- End quote ---

I'd put myself in the 30% of happy users, I've been using mine for over a year now I believe and it still works great. The ladies love a driving cabinet  ;D. Turning the centering feedback way down makes it sound sort of weak but instead I would probably say the centering needs to be adjusted to the proper level (which just happens to be much lower then the default after the hack). It's still very strong, just not so strong that it bounced back and forth trying to correct itself. This also has to be done on two other stock logitech wheels I use so it might even be avoidable using a different brand wheel to hack the pcb :dunno.

If you decided to make a driving cabinet without force feedback I'd probably still recommend using something like a hacked logitech pcb because the software they let you use is incredibly useful for configuring controls is different emulators. This is unless you want a 360 degrees wheel of course. Definitely check out badmouth's driving thread though there is a ton of awesome information in it.

If you've been gone for a few years then maybe check out a new frontend such as hyperspin. It looks awesome and is very configurable but tends to be more resource heavy then older frontends so might not work unless you plan on upgrading the computer in your mame cab. It's at least worth checking out some videos on YouTube though to see what it's all about.

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