Mouse problems

[bkenobi]

Okay, so I've been screwing around with this for quite a while and haven't found a solution. I got some help with a similar issue here, so I figured I'd give the request a try.

I have a pair of steering wheels on my driving cabinet (an old Championship Sprint) that I want to interface with the PC (obviously). I looked into the optipac and opti-Wiz, but thought I could do just as well with a cheap mouse. Well, at this point, I've hacked (and rehacked) about 5 mice to try to get something working. So here's the problem. I want to use USB for the mouse, and obviously it has to be a ball mouse. I purchased one from a local store (the only USB ball mouse I could find locally) and hacked it. No problem, it seemed to work fine. Well, that is until I realized that it was sending scroll wheel up/down when I turn left/right (sending up/down of the mouse). Apparently that one has the scroll wheel wired in with the up/down directions funny.

So, I tried buying a cheapo 2 button ball mouse online for like $3.50. It worked fine before I hacked it, but after it seemed to just act funny. I think I broke it when I tore it from the cabinet and threw it across the room . So I tried a PS/2 mouse and it works fine, except MAME doesn't really work well with it. GRRRRRRRR.

So, I'm wondering if there is a way to just disable the scroll mouse entirely? I disabled it in the registry so it doesn't work in Windows, but then in GameEx it still seems to be hooking the stupid thing EVEN WHEN I HAVE MOUSE DISABLED IN GAMEEX!? ARG!

At this point, I could break down and buy an optipac or opti-wiz, but that's admitting defeat , so I was hoping to do it with an AutoHotKey or AutoIt script. Or better yet, maybe Tom has a solution?

Basically, what I'm saying is HELP!

[jthompson]

Okay, so I've been screwing around with this for quite a while and haven't found a solution. I got some help with a similar issue here, so I figured I'd give the request a try.

I have a pair of steering wheels on my driving cabinet (an old Championship Sprint) that I want to interface with the PC (obviously). I looked into the optipac and opti-Wiz, but thought I could do just as well with a cheap mouse. Well, at this point, I've hacked (and rehacked) about 5 mice to try to get something working. So here's the problem. I want to use USB for the mouse, and obviously it has to be a ball mouse. I purchased one from a local store (the only USB ball mouse I could find locally) and hacked it. No problem, it seemed to work fine. Well, that is until I realized that it was sending scroll wheel up/down when I turn left/right (sending up/down of the mouse). Apparently that one has the scroll wheel wired in with the up/down directions funny.

So, I tried buying a cheapo 2 button ball mouse online for like $3.50. It worked fine before I hacked it, but after it seemed to just act funny. I think I broke it when I tore it from the cabinet and threw it across the room . So I tried a PS/2 mouse and it works fine, except MAME doesn't really work well with it. GRRRRRRRR.

So, I'm wondering if there is a way to just disable the scroll mouse entirely? I disabled it in the registry so it doesn't work in Windows, but then in GameEx it still seems to be hooking the stupid thing EVEN WHEN I HAVE MOUSE DISABLED IN GAMEEX!? ARG!

At this point, I could break down and buy an optipac or opti-wiz, but that's admitting defeat , so I was hoping to do it with an AutoHotKey or AutoIt script. Or better yet, maybe Tom has a solution?

Basically, what I'm saying is HELP!

I used the directions found here to build my spinner which doubles as a steering wheel if needed (haven't gotten around to a real steering wheel yet). It works really well for a hacked mouse and I don't get any weird up down scrolling issues. Mine is a PS2 mouse hack. I think Mame works just fine with it as it sees multiple mice and lets you select which one does what. It just takes a little experimentation. The only thing maybe different for me was that I used an older mouse without a scroll wheel. You should have had 2 light choppers and 2 opto interrupters on that ball mouse. Did you try setting it up on the other opto interrupter? You should have an up-down interrupter and a left-right interrupter. Maybe putting the light chopper between the other interrupter will make it work better. BTW, mine is set up on the left-right interrupter. I didn't go with this design but on this page is another spinner mouse hack that has good pictures that may help you. It will also explain to those of you that are wondering what the F*** I'm talking about.

Jay T

[bkenobi]

Thanks for the reply. I think I looked at that hack at some point. It's true that there are ways (actually pretty easy ways) to take the hardware the came with the mouse and move it up to the encoder wheel on the steering wheels, but I already have working optoencoder boards on the steering wheels that should be putting out the same signal. My goal was to leave the original wiring original and unhacked.

I'm guessing by the description that that's what you did (use the original optical receiver/ir emitter). I have a PS/2 mouse that's an old MS Intellimouse v1 (I think). I tried it as an experiment and found that it did work, but I was having issues assigning controls to it in MAME. I also read that USB had much better support. I actually was in the process of looking at my cheapo mouse and the PS/2 as options when I took a break to check this thread, so your experiences with the PS/2 are encouraging.

Btw, when you set up a mouse control with your PS/2 mouse, does it detect it or do you have to manually type in the control in the .cfg file? That's primarily why I wasn't happy with it in the first place.

[jthompson]

Thanks for the reply. I think I looked at that hack at some point. It's true that there are ways (actually pretty easy ways) to take the hardware the came with the mouse and move it up to the encoder wheel on the steering wheels, but I already have working optoencoder boards on the steering wheels that should be putting out the same signal. My goal was to leave the original wiring original and unhacked.

I'm guessing by the description that that's what you did (use the original optical receiver/ir emitter). I have a PS/2 mouse that's an old MS Intellimouse v1 (I think). I tried it as an experiment and found that it did work, but I was having issues assigning controls to it in MAME. I also read that USB had much better support. I actually was in the process of looking at my cheapo mouse and the PS/2 as options when I took a break to check this thread, so your experiences with the PS/2 are encouraging.

Btw, when you set up a mouse control with your PS/2 mouse, does it detect it or do you have to manually type in the control in the .cfg file? That's primarily why I wasn't happy with it in the first place.

Hmmm, well no I don't remember doing anything like that, basically its just a hobbled mouse that only moves left and right when I turn the spinner knob. It moves in Windows and GameEx and Mame, not a big deal for me as most people reach for the trackball on my cab before anything else. When you go into MAME and hit tab key to set up controls (and I cant remember what setting its under, p1 controls, analog controls etc, you just have to dig around) you will see mouse X and Y settings. If you have more than one mouse device as I do, you will see mouse 1 mouse 2 etc. This is where you could set up say mouse 1 controls steering wheel 1 and mouse 2 controls steering wheel 2 and so on, but like I said I'm not sure exactly which setting its under. Lightgun settings are in here somewhere too. For my setup I like to play tempest for example with the spinner but I don't want anyone screwing with the trackball messing up my game as windows sees only one mouse, or should I say, it only uses one pointer for however many mice you have. Mame detects all the different mice you have and can use each one as a different controller which is really cool if you want a multiplayer driving game or whatever. My spinner BTW was made using the hard drive spinner hack from one of the links I sent you, I can get about 40 seconds of spin from it. This was the only real hack I used on my whole cab and I've really enjoyed using it. All this from a ten dollar mouse and the bearing from a dead hard-drive. You know, you could probably assign the Y coordinates to one steering wheel and the X coordinates to another one just using one mouse for both. But it sounds like my solution may not help you at all as I'm guessing you don't want any mouse input at all from your steering wheel unless in mame, But how cool would it be to scroll the list of games in GameEx with the wheel and select and start the game with the gas pedal. Just a thought.

Jay T

[bkenobi]

Yeah, controlling GameEx with the steering wheels has been the plan from the get go. I just got the mouse working (I think). I went back to the PS/2 mouse and figured out why it wasn't detecting in MAME. Apparently, I wasn't spinning the wheels far enough. I'm guessing that the USB mice didn't work because of the dual inputs (movement direction + wheel movement). I currently have mouse disabled in GameEx, but it sounds like if I enable them, they should scroll the list automatically then? If not, then the AHK script I wrote might work instead. At least I have something that doesn't send wheel movements now and it is detected in MAME so I'm a couple steps closer to getting things right.

[jthompson]

Yeah, controlling GameEx with the steering wheels has been the plan from the get go. I just got the mouse working (I think). I went back to the PS/2 mouse and figured out why it wasn't detecting in MAME. Apparently, I wasn't spinning the wheels far enough. I'm guessing that the USB mice didn't work because of the dual inputs (movement direction + wheel movement). I currently have mouse disabled in GameEx, but it sounds like if I enable them, they should scroll the list automatically then? If not, then the AHK script I wrote might work instead. At least I have something that doesn't send wheel movements now and it is detected in MAME so I'm a couple steps closer to getting things right.

Good to hear you got it sorted out, I just remembered something though, I don't think you will be able to scroll through the list like we were talking about since GameEx doesn't Scroll that way. With the up or down arrow you could scroll but the mouse will just point to a spot in the list, not scroll it. This would be and probably has been sugested as a feature request. I'm not sure how, but maybe your AHK script might work. This would be pretty cool to get working.

Jay T

[bkenobi]

Okay, then I'll get back to it an see if I can't get it working. Thanks!

[bkenobi]

Just an update, I have things working in MAME at this point, but since GameEx doesn't take input from the mouse as movement in the list (only actual mouse movement), I still can't select anything. I really want to use GameEx in this cab for both consistency and ease of setup, but if I can't get this working, I'll probably have to go with MAMEwah or something. This cabinet doesn't have to be fancy like my main one, but it's a pain to learn how to setup MAMEwah.

I have tried about everything I can think of to get GameEx to ignore the mouse and accept key presses from AHK and have come up empty. Anyone who has gotten AHK scripts to send keys to GameEx have any advice? PLEASE?