Clairification on rotary joysticks and opti-pac please.

[Bursar]

I've just redesigned my CP on paper, and I can now get a 4 player panel built

To start with, I'm using an I-Pac4 to wire up a pair of Happ Super joysticks and a selection of buttons. Then in a short time, I'll buy two Happ Optical Rotary sticks and extra buttons so I can add in players 3 and 4 to the CP.

The question I have is about the best way to connect the rotary sticks. As I'll need to rewire the I-PAC anyway (to move the super sticks over to players 3 and 4), should I just leave the player 1 and 2 joystick ports on the I-PAC and empty and only connect the rotary sticks to the Opti-Pac, or should I wire them into the I-PAC as well?

Oh, and speaking of these things, I've been searching through the threads about the best way to get two rotary sticks working together, and it seems as if the DOS is the best way. If I use Win98 (booting to DOS), ArcadeOS, and MAME:ANALOG+ is there anything else I need to think about.

TIA

[SirPoonga]

depends on the type of rotory joystick you have.

An optical uses optics like a trackball or spinner.

A 12 way (like the ones on ikari warriors) you will need the Druin's interface.

http://www.arcadecontrols.com/arcade_druin.shtml
http://members.rogers.com/druins22/ls30/

[Thorn]

I believe you will need to connect the joystick switches to the IPAC4 and the optical board of the optical rotary joysticks to the Opti-pac. You might be thinking you can connect the entire joystick up to the optipac.    

[Bursar]

Right, I'm with ya now Thanks. I was kind of thinking that maybe the Opti-Pac had connections for the joystick switches as well. Now I know it doesn't so that's cool.

Thanks.

[Tiger-Heli]

Right, I'm with ya now Thanks. I was kind of thinking that maybe the Opti-Pac had connections for the joystick switches as well. Now I know it doesn't so that's cool.

Thanks.

If you're using the Opti-pac, see this thread about http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=2150 hooking things up to it.  For the rotaries, I would hook up stick up as port 1 X-axis and the other as port 1 Y-axis.  As long as you are using the same port, you can use MAME Analog + (with any OS) to assign the Y-axis to player 2.  (This may have made it into official mamew as well, but I'm not sure.

[Bursar]

That sounds a better bet actually. Should make things easier, as I only have to worry about one serial port.

Ta muchly.

[Bursar]

That sounds a better bet actually. Should make things easier, as I only have to worry about one serial port.

Ta muchly.