Spinners and Trackball controls

I’ve searched and cannot find the answer to this, or I don’t understand the answers I am finding:

I have a arcade controller board with a spinner and trackball. I’ve seen videos of people tabbing into the game menu in RA, selecting the control they want to change, then rolling the trackball and having it keyed into the game (like for the arcade game Centipede). This doesn’t work when I do it. I select the control, but activating either control doesn’t work. It’s like these controls aren’t even recognized by the system.

So how DO I get RA to “see” my controls (i.e. spinner and trackball). Everything else (joysticks, buttons, etc) are fine. I’ve seen some say that a line or two needs to be added to the config file (since both control are considered like mice, it would be something like "mouse = 1, mouse = 2, etc). Where does this go exactly?

Also, if this works for the arcade games, how do I get it working for Atari 2600 and other consoles, like the paddle controlled games Breakout, Kaboom, ? The setup is different for consoles. I also heard that Stella stand alone will allow you to add these controls, but I would prefer to do it all in RA if possible.

Thanks for your help!

i have the same issue, have you solved this yet? If you have, could you let me know how you did it. Thanks in advance.

Unfortunately, I have not. I’ve got my hands full with other things I’m more capable of figuring out on my own so have put this on the back burner, hoping that someone comes along who can help us with this issue.

If I do figure it out though, I’ll be sure to post. Please post as well if you have any luck. Thanks.

I would be grateful if someone has a solution to getting trackballs and spinners to show up in RA. I’m approaching the point where I will need to figure this out, and so far have been unable to find anything that works. In addition to the arcade and Atari 2600, I’m discovering other console games that used an alternate trackball or spinner. Colecovision apparently had a trackball controller at one time.

If anyone knows about this, please chime in. I know I’m not the only person with this issue, and it would be a lot of help for all of us. Thank you!

Ok, so I figured out how to get the trackball and spinner operational in MAME/Arcade. It’s pretty simple really, I just wish someone could have told me this months ago.

  1. Find the text file “retroarch-core-options” in the Retroarch home directory.

  2. Open it with Notepad++ or an advanced text file reader. If you open it with just Notepad basic it’s a mess and difficult to find the line you’re looking for.

  3. Go down to the block of “mame” options and find “mame_mouse_enable = “disabled””. Change “disabled” to “enabled”.

  4. Save the file.

Viola! It’s really that simple. Your spinner/trackball should work in MAME games now.

Now I need to figure out if I can get them in Atari 2600 and other consoles that use these types of controls. Even ColecoVision had a trackball controller for certain games. I don’t even know even the core or RA wold accept these inputs in those cores, or what line to add if that line is currently there. More research I guess.

Did you ever find this in the other consoles? World be handy for the 2600.

No, unfortunately I did not. I’m thinking about using Stella directly for those games that require the paddle controller.

I wish we could get more help on these forums. :frowning_face: