Prewired JAMMA trackball and ARpiCADE

[Kevin_S]

Hello,

I have a JAMMA cabinet I've been using for years with an ArcadeSD card that I want to convert over to use ARpiCADE and RaspberryJAMMA. At first glance, it appears as though the trackball will not work with trackball type games, such as Centipede. It has worked flawlessly for me with the Arcade SD card.

I am using ARpiCADE 3.84, which is the highscoresaves image I received with the vertical romset.

Is there a config file change I need to make -- in mame or elsewhere -- for this trackball to be recognized? Thanks in advance for your help.

[dee2eR]

How are you attaching the trackball? To use it with the system you will need a USB converter if you don't already have one. I use an Opti-Wiz, others have said Opti-PACs also work, there's probably others too.

If you're already using it via USB is it working in the menu? If it's not working in the menu either there maybe a hardware issue.

Otherwise trackball support varies from emulator to emulator. With the default ARpiCADE config games in MAME 203, 172 or 106 should work without further fiddling. You may need to adjust the controls through MAMEs menus for fine tuning or similar though. The Retroarch based emulators arn't setup for analog inputs, for any cores that support it it would need to be set up through the Retroarch menus (I think, I haven't done it myself).

If you have the trackball plugged into the 6 pin header on the RaspberryJAMMA it won't work that way. That header is just for extra buttons and has no analog input support.

[Kevin_S]

Thanks for your reply. My trackball is wired directly into the player 2 controls on the Jamma harness.

So it sounds like maybe that setup isn't compatible with ARpiCADE and instead a USB solution must be used? Or is it that I would need to have a MAME config file look to player 2 controls for a trackball game?

I really don't want to rewire my cabinet just for this product if I don't have to.

[dee2eR]

There's nothing in the software to interpret your trackball when attached to the JAMMA edge. In theory if you had a driver for it it could be done but unfortunately the software isn't configured like that by default. Basically you would need a custom version of mk_arcade_joystick_rpi input driver setup for analog inputs on the P2 GPIOs.

I maybe wrong but I suspect trackball wired to P2 controls on the JAMMA edge is an ArcadeSD thing rather than something common or following a standard. The actual JAMMA standard only covers digital inputs as far as I'm aware (there maybe some ancient JAMMA standard documentation that proves me wrong on this though.)

[Kevin_S]

I maybe wrong but I suspect trackball wired to P2 controls on the JAMMA edge is an ArcadeSD thing rather than something common or following a standard. The actual JAMMA standard only covers digital inputs as far as I'm aware (there maybe some ancient JAMMA standard documentation that proves me wrong on this though.)

I don't know. All I do know is that it's worked for both the 60-in-1 and ArcadeSD setups I've had in the past. Guess I now just need to decide if I feel like doing some rewiring. Thanks for your input.