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I'll be todays vidiot: # of spinners on a minipac?
Tweaked:
OK, I'll be todays vidiot:
I read the minipac can control spinners and I am a huge fan of super offroad and super sprint and the spinning steering wheels... What I need to know is how many spinners (spinning steering wheels) I can put on a Minipac, and can they be double wired with the joysticks to save inputs or give players the option to use either stick or wheel? Would a minipac be able to control 2 spinners and 1 trackball?
oh, can minipacs be daisy chained the way Ipac2's and Ipac4's can be using usb?
Thanks
Tiger-Heli:
For simplicity - minipac=I-pac+half Optipac.
Nope, scratch that, just looked at the schematic - http://www.ultimarc.com/mp_inst.html
--- Quote from: Tweaked on August 14, 2004, 05:08:14 pm ---I read the minipac can control spinners and I am a huge fan of super offroad and super sprint and the spinning steering wheels... What I need to know is how many spinners (spinning steering wheels) I can put on a Minipac
--- End quote ---
Two - but they will have to be connected as Trackball Y and Trackball X and you will probably need MAME Analog + to get them working together. (Actually, looking at the schematic, it implies you could have 3 hooked up, but I think it will autoswitch between the trackball and spinner inputs, so the best you could do is probably 2 using the trackball inputs only)
--- Quote ---, and can they be double wired with the joysticks to save inputs
--- End quote ---
No, the spinners and joysticks wire up completely separately, but
--- Quote ---give players the option to use either stick or wheel?
--- End quote ---
You can do this in MAME by assigning either Trackball X - or Left Arrow to Left.
--- Quote --- Would a minipac be able to control 2 spinners and 1 trackball?
--- End quote ---
Yes, but what you would need to do is hook both the spinners and trackballs together to the same inputs and use a DPDT switch like http://www.oscarcontrols.com/DPDTswitch.shtml
--- Quote ---oh, can minipacs be daisy chained the way Ipac2's and Ipac4's can be using usb?
--- End quote ---
Supposedly so, but there was a recent thread where someone was having problems with it.
Tweaked:
Thanks alot, that was fast... appreciate it!
Tweaked:
My main objective is to have a control panel with 4 controllers (16), with 6 game buttons (24), start buttons (4), Coins (4), Pause (1), Escape (1), Mouse/Trackball (2 or 3), 1 Trackball, and finally 2 spinners.
What I was looking at was using 2 minipacs like:
minipac 1:
player1 with all associated buttons
Player2 with all associated buttons
trackball
minipac2 or ipac2:
player3 wtih all associated buttons
Player4 with all associated buttons
spinner1
spinner2
To me it doesn't matter if have to use USB or PS2 or possibly even a combination of this to make it work. Basically I was trying to save a buck by not having to buy an Ipac4 and an Opticpac.
Maybe I should also ask if there are any known or foreseeable shortcomings to this type of setup.
Thanks again.
Tiger-Heli:
--- Quote from: Tweaked on August 14, 2004, 05:59:17 pm ---My main objective is to have a control panel with 4 controllers (16), with 6 game buttons (24), start buttons (4), Coins (4), Pause (1), Escape (1), Mouse/Trackball (2 or 3), 1 Trackball, and finally 2 spinners.
What I was looking at was using 2 minipacs like:
minipac 1:
player1 with all associated buttons
Player2 with all associated buttons
trackball
minipac2 or ipac2:
player3 wtih all associated buttons
Player4 with all associated buttons
spinner1
spinner2
To me it doesn't matter if have to use USB or PS2 or possibly even a combination of this to make it work. Basically I was trying to save a buck by not having to buy an Ipac4 and an Opticpac.
Maybe I should also ask if there are any known or foreseeable shortcomings to this type of setup.
Thanks again.
--- End quote ---
Bad plan, IMHO - Remember, the Minipac with trackball support is $69, so you're going to spend $140 to avoid spending $110 for an I-PAC/2 and Opti-pac.
Beyond that, there are no 4-player games that require six-buttons per player, unless you are concerned with console emulation which would work better with gamepads anyway.
If you don't mind sharing inputs, you could do what you want for about $80 total with a KeyWiz and Opti-Pac, or not share inputs with the non-programmable two-bit score encoder.
Also see my comments in these threads:
http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=23042
http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=22871;start=msg188438#msg188438
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