I bought this turkey off ebay.
I also bought these three things:
It's a wheel. As in "Pole Position" wheel, not "Ted's brother and Mike Mott" wheel.
A crappy old trackball.
A really crappy old pole p051t10n gas pedal. Photo cropping courtesy of Ebay.
Twas my master desire to use the preexisting holes in yon dumpy tempest control panel to mount my steering wheel and trackball. The whole lot of it was then to set upon the Zoom Machine's most excellent lightning bolt control panel. I had the steering wheel. I had the trackball. Why shouldn't I mount them upon a tempest control panel? It made no sense to me and it makes no sense to you either.
I also decided to change the name of the Zoom Machine to Les Machine d'Zoom because you're all fruity Canadians.
The tempest control panel included, not only two aftermarket holes, but the two thumb buttons, two lighted start buttons and an original spinner in "it worked the last time I plugged it in" condition.
Alas, the gosh darn girl twas not my own. The steering wheel and trackball fit with splendid precision. It were as if a prior attempt to create the exact project had before me been made. Unfortunately the super-tempest control panel was too stupid for me to imagine in addition á Les Machine d'Zoom. It seemed to me as though the deities be against me.
In regards to the connection of the trackball / wheel / spinner and the arcade machine I chose to go with a mouse hack. In case you don't know what that is you're a sucka, ho. The laptop on which the wicked MAME emulator emulates les Machine d'Zoom has but one ps/2 jack. The single ps/2 jack is currenly owned by the keywiz keyboard encoder. No problem, I'd just buy a ps/2 splitter - then I'd be able to plug both the keywiz and my hacked-up mouse into the laptop. But, oh no! The guy at Best Buy told me there is no such thing as a ps/2 splitter! Thinking upon my hilarious size 13 feet, I asked if Best Buy carries a USB non-optical mouse. To which yonder jackass laughed and said, "no such thing has ever been manufactured!" Insulted, I then reached through the window of my home, extended my arm over fair Bellingham and backhanded his aloof, dobbie gillis gaw.
Again it seemed as though the project were doomed. As I now understood the situation, I could not split a ps/2 signal and I also could not hack a USB mouse because no such non-optical device had ever been created. The third and final option available was to convert a ps/2 plug into a USB plug. I went to an overpriced local computer store and asked for a converter. The guy handed me one and asked on what the apapter might be used. I explained the situation. He informed me that, indeed, non-optical USB mice exist and that the very store I was standing in carried them. Together we scoured the show room floor for the mouse. No luck. Embarrassed for having been caught in what was obviously a lie, the computer store guy checked each computer in the store until he found a USB non-optical mouse attached to a technician's service computer in the back office. I was sold the ellusive item for five bucks.
[note: in the middle of writing the following paragraph, NOTEPAD froze. It seemed unlikely that I would be able to revive the program. I didn't want to lose what I had written because it was just so darn good. So I took a picture of the screen, closed notepad, loaded the picture and copied what I had written from the picture back into the html document. The wording is just so perfect.]
I spent the afternoon soldering wires to the mouse. My plan was to connect the whole mess of optical controls to the single mouse. The trackball fired up without a hitch. It's still a piece of trash and it rolls like a flinstone bowling ball. The spinner scrolled jerky, like steppin' into a slimjim. And the spin of the steering wheel was non-existent like a, uh... empty set. Holy crap, the little finger on my right hand itches. [end picture transcription]. I deduced that the optical boards on the steering wheel and spinner were not as operational as the ebay sellers had lead me to believe (lied about). I gave them all negative feedback with lots of "F-----!!!1111's" and "ebay's worste!!'s" and then I purchased two new optical boards from Oscar Controls. While I waited for their arrival I built a new control panel. A new control panel that can be found by clicking on the link below this one on the menu bar to the left. The link which I have not yet created but will probably title something like, "new tempest control panel" or something.