MAME Trackball/Spinner Jerkiness

[KevSteele]

I've run into a problem with my MAME setup, and I have no idea how to fix it:

My trackball and spinner on my control panel are now "jerky" in gameplay - it looks like they're "snapping" to a grid almost - you move just a bit to the left, and the shooter will jump back to where it was originally.

Even worse, sometimes they'll just "lock up" in one direction (i.e., suddenly your centipede shooter will start going left, and keep going left even after you stop moving the trackball).

Mouse control is perfect in Windows, and I've disabled any mouse settings such as "pointer precision" or "snap to buttons". I've also uninstalled the drivers for the trackball, mouse, and spinner and reinstalled them.

This only happens in MAME, and I suspect it's due to a newer version of MAME, but I have no idea when this happened or how to fix it.

Strange thing is, sometimes I can get rid of the jerkiness by just opening up the analog controls setup in game and then closing it. Sometimes.

I'm starting to suffer from Tempest and Millipede withdrawl here, so any suggestions would be welcome!

Kevin

[2600]

Some have reported this if you have joystick enabled in the mame ini file or a joystick attached particularly USB.

Can you post your mame ini file?

Also, do you have a little bit more info?  What did you change recently?

Lastly, try deleting or moving your mame cfg files for the game and the default.cfg.

EDIT: You don't happen to be using a USB 2.0 hub do you?  That has caused these problems as well.

[ErikRuud]

I had a similar problem a while ago.  It is in this thread

I had a gameport joystick plugged in but I had "joystick 0" in my mame.ini.

When I changed it to "joystick 1" or removed the joystick, the problem went away.

[KevSteele]

Hmmm...I think I've got everything mentioned here:

1. A USB 2.0 hub...
2. with two USB gamepads attached.
3. Joystick set to 0.

Sounds like this may be an easy fix...I'll report back. Thanks!

Kevin

[KevSteele]

THANKS!

The trackball control is silky smooth again.

I just removed the USB gamepads, since I never use them anyway.

Thinking back, things started acting wonky when I did a "clean install" of MAME, and now I know why - I never enabled the gamepads in MAME, even though they were attached.

The USB 2.0 hub is still hooked up, although nothing's attached.

Excuse me, I've got to leave now - I've got a lot of Tempest to catch up on! (Thanks again  )

Kevin

[dema]

I'm having the same problem with my trackball and spinner, but the thing is that I have a few of the GP Wiz 49 way encoders, which I understand is read as if they are a gamepad. I have a Mini Pac for the trackball and spinner.

I have my joysticks set to 1 because it wasn't reading in MAME until I made the change.

I wasn't sure if the gamepads were the problem. But how would I solve this problem if I can't remove the GP Wiz encoders without totally ruining my control scheme?

[dema]

My trackball and spinner problem has for the most part been solved. By replacing my 2.0 hub with a standard 1.0 hub the trackball and spinner are no longer schizophrenic. For some reason when I first start up a game using either the trackball or spinner the character moves to the top left of the playfield, even when the control is not being moved. However, after I monkey around with the controls for a minute during the game, or go into the tab controls and move around a little bit it starts to work out.

In time I'll try to figure it out, and I still have a lot of software and aesthetic tweaking to do, but right now I'm just so happy that I'm able to get movement and play out of my arcade!!!