I apologize if this has been discussed or answered before. But my quick search (before I run to class) did not give any straight forward answers.
I have Mame 1.06 [0.106] and was wondering how to configure my Spinner to work in Mame. It is a Turbo twist set for Z axis with a trackball hooked up to the X & Y axis. Everything, 3 buttons, trackball, and even spinner (side scroll) work in windows, so I know it works. I just need to get it to work in mame for games like Tron and Tempest ... etc.
Is there a straight forward way? maybe in the mame.ini?...
Actually if somone could point me to a "MAME configuration for DUMMIES" site, that would help.
The cfg (or ctrlr) handle remapping inputs.
MameFAQ h03 &
h05 goes into great detail on remapping, and that FAQ answers a lot of questions. They may be worded differently than you wound ask them, so a quick search might not find the question, though.

Basically, you would remap the dial inputs in "Input (general)" to the Z axis.
Another great info source is
EasyEmu. An okay source comes with mame in the docs folder; windows.txt describes the options. And if you questions, usually these forums are friendly to almost any Q.