Make your Trackball Work Mame2003 Retropie 4 4

[@zacharytrich8084]

There is a glitch with the X-arcade trackball and raspberry pi 4. You have to plug it in, unplug it, and plug it back in. Every time you power on. With this info and your video I was able to finally get my trackball to work! Thank you lots!

[@ClayCarlino]

That's awesome! Congratulations! Kind of sucks about the Raspberry pi 4 glitch though. I would find that really annoying with the track ball being built into my cabinet.

[@DaButcher]

on your X-Arcade you have the switch on 1,2,3 or 4 on the back of the panel of the Xstick case?

[@zacharytrich8084]

@DaButcher I built my own but used the X-Arcade trackball in my build. I'm unfamiliar with the X-Stick.. Sorry I can't help you out more!

[@DaButcher]

@Zachary Trich no problem thanks for the reply. I will try this solution Tues or Wed.

[@TheFuzzdolls]

I love this video. My trackball still doen't work, but you are an excellent teacher nonetheless.

[@ClayCarlino]

I'm so sorry this solution didn't help. I spent about a year off and on digging through forums and websites trying different things until I found this solution. There was one other thing that sort of worked but had other issues. I remember at one point downloading an image for an already fully customized version of retropie. The trackball worked when I ran that. The problem was that I couldn't make my safe shutdown button work, and to me the safe shutdown is a MUST! If you're interested in trying that let me know and I'll see if I can find the site I downloaded that image from. Good luck, and thanks for the kind words!

[@Bastich1976]

Oddest thing. I switched from a generic controller to an iPac4 and lost the trackball ability. This got it working again. Thanks!

[@ClayCarlino]

Oh good! I'll be honest, with as much fighting as I had to do to get everything working, I don't plan on changing ANYTHING on this machine EVER! Ha ha. I'm glad you got your trackball working. Congrats! Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@kq7082]

YESSSSSSS!!! Finally my trackball works again! After an update on my Raspberry Pi 3b+, it stopped working, but after following these directions, it's working exactly as it had before. I didn't have my hotkeys set up, but I was able to navigate to my Retroarch settings and follow everything you did from there. So glad I found your video. Thank you! (One of the only games it doesn't work for is Centipede -- my version happens to be on Fbalpha. I guess I'm probably better off trying to find one that works on Mame instead).

[@ClayCarlino]

Probably! I have never used Fbalpha, so I know nothing about it, but finding mame Tom’s for Centipede is not hard. I’m really glad my video helped! I poked around with mine for a year before I found a solution! Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting.

[@kupakai5]

I really like your two tier control panel! That's pretty unique, especially with built in keyboard. I realize this video is a couple of months old, but regarding the issue with saving config file, you should be able to find it is Main Menu --> Configuration File --> Save Current File. I use the Ozone menu driver so it might be a little different, but similar, if not the same. But also I never had problems myself with the way you are saving the config files anyways.

[@ClayCarlino]

Thanks! I'll look for that the next time I'm messing with the settings. I always appreciate when people have good insights to share. Thanks again!

[@analogkid281]

Thank you for helping me get my spinner and trackball working!!!

[@ClayCarlino]

I'm so glad my video was helpful! Thank you for letting me know. Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@bobbaleno4894]

thanks for the help. you are right I recently upgraded and the same thing happened. I too searched and after 10 youtube videos and a few websites I finally have it working

[@ClayCarlino]

Congratulations! Yeah... getting the trackball to work took me a YEAR of of on and off trying different things, having it not work then backing off until I try again after a week or so of looking new stuff up. I'm glad my video was helpful! Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@marcbernhardt6183]

This didn't work on my homemade cabinet. But I did learn about binds. So, it was a net plus.

[@ClayCarlino]

Oh no! That sucks! I'm sorry it didn't work for you. When you figure out the problem, if you'd like to explain your solution here, I'd love for people to see it. Also, if you end up making a video or post of the solution elsewhere online, feel free to post a link to it here. I'm sure people would love to see it. Thanks for commenting. Sorry the video did not solve your problem.

[@AdamMontgomery1]

Also spent a year+ trying to configure my trackball in a very similar set up, but mine was made even more difficult by the fact that it's a dedicated Centipede cabinet with no joystick... long story, but I was finally able to get it all working today thanks largely in part to this video!! My only remaining issue is that I can't seem to figure out how to configure the trackball sensitivity for individual games... some games the trackball is way too sensitive, while on others it's slow and unresponsive. Any ideas? Great and very helpful video though-- thanks!!!

[@ClayCarlino]

Thanks SO MUCH! I’m really glad this video was helpful! I’m afraid that I’ve had the same issue. The speed and sensitivity for one game are wrong for others. For a while I would try to dial it in for each game, but as you said, the settings don’t stick per game. Now I’ve got it set in a sort of “middle of the road” between what works best for centipede, torn and Star Wars. Not the best solution, but I’ve been able to live with it. If you find a better solution, please let me know! Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@AdamMontgomery1]

@@ClayCarlino I'm tinkering with one particular setting that isn't game specific, but the results have been sporadic so far tonight... I'm on MAME 2003, which looks to be the same as what you're using for the most part. When you start a game and bring up the MAME settings menu, there's an option for Analog Controls, where you can tweak the sensitivity of the axis. I'm trying to find the best universal settings for this so that most games are somewhat optimized. Alternatively, it seems as if MAME 2010 allows you to tweak the analog controls for specific games, but I have not tried this and I'm too afraid that switching emulators will somehow ruin my control setup again... but it seems possible. If I can just get Centipede to be ideal, I'll be okay with other games being not-so-ideal...

[@ClayCarlino]

@@AdamMontgomery1 for what it’s worth, I’m running both make 2003 and 2010. There’s a handful of games that work on one but not the other. (Star Wars, Tron, and a few others.) So far I haven’t noticed any conflicts using 2 different versions of mame in the same cabinet. Everything is in separate folders so as far as Retropie is concerned it’s just another emulator with its own Ron’s folder and it’s own set of Roms. (On a side note, my phone hates everything I’m typing. The autocorrect wants to change Mame to “main” and Roms to “Tom’s! Ugh!) Anyway, I hope that’s helpful. Thanks again!

[@danpettis1675]

hi Clay. just like you I struggled with the trackball. but thanks to you. I got it to work. however now the joystick no longer works. ahh. my machine is a 1 player. running a raspberry pi. do you have any ideas of what it can be? can it be possible that I need to have it set up as a 2 player. because it might favor the trackball over the joystick. ? thank you

[@ClayCarlino]

Ooooff! That’s tricky. It’s been a while since the last time I messed with this, but It sounds like somehow it’s made the trackball the default controller. You may be right about the issue being related to it being a single player cabinet. You could try setting it to two player and enabling both controllers. I seem to remember a setting I had to put into mine to assign specific controllers to specific players. Before setting that up either controller would work at any given time. In your case, you would do the opposite. Make sure that no specific controller is assigned to a specific player and hopefully, the joystick will come back to life! I’m sorry I don’t have more specific information. Retropie is really involved and as much as I LOVE what the software does, figuring out how to make it work is always painful. Let me know how it goes, and if you’re still having trouble, leave another comment saying so. I’ll gladly shoot a quick video and go through my settings so you can see how I’ve got everything set up, and maybe reverse engineer a solution. Good luck! Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@shadowninja1474]

So when you are doing this I assume you are only messing with the Centipede ROM correct? So if you mess something up it will only be centipede that is messed up and not any of your other ROMS. Is that correct? I am just nervous to try this and mess up all my mame settings. Thanks for any help.

[@ClayCarlino]

Once I changed the settings while playing Centipede, my trackball worked for all my trackball games. So no. When you save these settings, they apply to Retroarch, which handles all the Retropie settings, not just the single rom and not even just MAME. I have 2 recommendations for you. 1.) Make a fresh copy of your sd card. Creating an image of an sd card is not difficult and you can store the image on your computer just to have as a backup in case your sd card ever goes bad. Even if you weren't about to mess with settings, you should do this. Sd cards are not reliable long term and corrupt easily. 2.) Once you are are into Retroarch, take notes of the existing settings before you change anything. You can do this with paper and pencil, or my just taking quick pics with your phone, or by taking a video with a phone making sure to get good shots of the screen, and narrate what you are doing so you can refer back to it later. I COMPLETELY understand not wanting to risk screwing up the stuff that works in MAME. Its a confusing program that is very hard to navigate. In fact all of Retropie is that way. It takes a lot of work to get things to work the way you want them. But you shouldn't be scared to try this. Just take these precautions so you can reset what you've done if you encounter a problem. Also, once you successfully poke around and improve your system you'll be able to enjoy your games more while also becoming more knowledgeable and confident in yourself. That's a win- win! Let me know how it goes! I'm always happy to try to help if I can. Good luck! Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@shadowninja1474]

@@ClayCarlino Thank you so much for your incredible help and detailed reply. I will definitely use those helpful tips you gave and try to navigate the program. Thanks again!👍

[@ShinobiShowdown]

I have a trackball on a modded 1up stoked to get it working soon!

[@ClayCarlino]

It took me so long to find the right info on this, I really hope this video saves you all that trouble. Good luck!

[@ShinobiShowdown]

@@ClayCarlino I have my hands full as it is! LOL I have thousands of games to load onto my Pi 4 trying to get Attract Mode working and building my own library and system from the ground up! I need all the shortcuts I can take! I just got into Pi 4 last October and I have spent almost the entire year just on hardware mods. I am finishing off the hardware side this month. I upgraded everything I could except the monitor and putting a compter instead of the Pi 4. I have a 4 player cab and am creating a favorite list with all the 4 player games I can find. I have spent a lot of money on it could have used it for my health, pay off my car, bills, or home improvement but I will enjoy a multicade a lot more! I just hope my future projects are a lot less complicated and expensive!

[@ClayCarlino]

@@ShinobiShowdown wow! That sounds fantastic! If you've got pics or videos of any of your work, and want to share, feel free to post them here. I'd love to see your progress as I'm sure many other would as well. Thanks for the comments and good luck with your multicade! It really sounds amazing!

[@gordons-alive4940]

Retropie can do some amazing things. No disrespect for the makers, but configuring it is a world of hurt.

[@ClayCarlino]

Oh you are SOOOOOOOOO right! It's a fantastic collection of software, but the whole thing is tremendously complicated. And I think that's unavoidable. There are so many different emulators all sharing a single control system- all functioning within a single dedicated OS. Yeah. It's a bear! But what it can do makes it all worth it! Anyway, thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@PlasmicSteve]

Agreed. There are days when I regret using it. And I'm fairly technical, at least able to explore this stuff. For someone not technically savvy who just wants to play games, they should avoid for another 5-10 years in the hopes that it greatly improves.

[@ClayCarlino]

@@PlasmicSteve yeah it's pretty rough! Although the other option for non-tech savvy people is to just buy something that's already set up. There a TON of retro systems, KO nintendo minis, MAME decks and other things available. Depending on what you want, you can spend a little money or a lot! I got my wife a little game-boy style portable pre-loaded with hundreds of games from a bunch of systems and it was about 60 bucks. I've seen smaller ones with less options for around 20. On the side of the spectrum, my friend bought a full size pre built mame cabinet, fully configured and loaded with thousands of game, again from a bunch of different systems for about $1300. So there's definitely something for everyone!

[@PlasmicSteve]

@@ClayCarlino Yes, that would probably be their best option, though I would hope they'd explore what Raspberry Pi is like and, if applicable, decide it's too much trouble for them to maintain before choosing another, more simpler system.

[@ClayCarlino]

@@PlasmicSteve absolutely! The educational opportunity of digging in to a pi is one of it's greatest assets. But I do understand that some people don't really want to know how to make the sausage or even how to cook the sausage. They just want to enjoy the sausage. And most likely they have their own things that they do and know a lot about that we as tinkerers probably don't understand or care about. So if they can afford to have someone else make their sausage- that's okay in my book. Also I just made biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast. It was delicious!

[@FlanFanNetwork]

U can click on configuration or on overrides then select game save

[@ClayCarlino]

Cool! I'll try that next time! Thanks for the advice! You rock!

[@jeffhelfand3995]

Have you tried to get a Spinner & a Trackball working on the same system? I'm using RecalBox but Retro Pie all run over Emulation Station and Retroarch, so fundamentally the same. I can get the system to see an analog device, but you can't have two at the same time. I.E. you play Centipede and then want to play Tempest...the latter using a spinner. Before launching into Tempest, you have to unplug the trackball and plug in the spinner. It sucks! On PC Mame or Mac Mame...it works, no problem.

[@juliemikesell8745]

Seems like you should be able to use the method mentioned in the video, but you're going to use the index that corresponds to the trackball for Centipede and use the index that corresponds to the spinner for Tempest.

[@wayofthewrench]

any idea how to speed up the movement on the trackball?

[@marcbernhardt6183]

Go into analog settings and increase the sensitivity.

[@danpettis1675]

I have a pi 4 . my retroarch looks a little different. so I can't follow along to your steps. .ahh just when I thought I would finally get my trackball to work.. thanks for the video

[@ClayCarlino]

Oh man! That sucks! I haven’t tried Pi4 yet, so I don’t even have any advice other than maybe looking at the names of the settings I’m adjusting and the names of menus and submenus and doing separate searches online to see how to navigate to those places on a pi4. Then MAYBE, changing a same or similar setting could help. Again, I’m sorry the video didn’t help. Good luck in getting your trackball working! Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@vitellismaximus]

Clay I need help! I went through these steps and I am getting an error when I save the configuration file. Any idea why? Failed saving config to “/opt/retropie/config/arcade/retroarch.cfg”

[@ClayCarlino]

Hmmmm... well it sounds like the error is happening at the point of saving. There's only 2 things that come to mind when that happens- 1.) Your SD card is in write protect mode. There's that little slider on the side of the card that if it's in one position allows reading and writing to the card. The other position prevents writing. (You probably knew that already, but I just like to cover my bases.) 2.) Your SD card has become corrupt. I've had this happen quite a few times. Several of the times, the effect was that my Pi would boot up and run just fine, but I could save anything at all! So save states, no adding new rooms and no saving settings. This was usually the precursor to larger problems. So my recommendation is to first check the slider and make sure the card isn't write protected. If it isn't, try a new SD card. Hopefully you have a clean copy or you made an image of the card after you got everything installed. If not... well, you already know how involved setting up Retropie is from scratch! Good luck! I hope everything works out for you! Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@FunkmasterV]

Good job man... you helped me out. get your cameraman an inhaler ;)

[@ClayCarlino]

Will do! Ha ha! Glad to help! Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@s.cartman292]

Hi! What Trackball do I have to buy to make in run on my Raspberry Pi 3 and Emulation station?

[@ClayCarlino]

My trackball is an x-arcade trackball. The nice thing is that as far as any computer is concerned it is a mouse. I don't know a lot about different brands, but I think anything that works as a USB mouse should work with a Raspberry pi. That being said the X-arcade stuff is extremely high quality, so if you get one, I think you'll be happy. Freel free to let me know how your project goes. Good luck! Thanks for commenting!

[@s.cartman292]

@@ClayCarlino Thanks for answering!

[@BAwesomeDesign]

I tried 1,2,3,4,5,6,7... this thing goes on forever... lol. Still no love for the trackball.

[@ClayCarlino]

Well crap! I assume you've probably already double checked obvious stuff, like making sure it's saving the settings after you leave the settings screen and such. There are terminal commands that you can use to ensure the raspberry pi is aware that the trackball is connected. I'm sorry, I don't remember the links for how to do that, but a quick google search is what led me there. You can also make sure the physical connection is good. Maybe pop in a different SD card with rasbian installed, just to make sure the track ball works as a mouse. Assuming all those things are okay, then I'm not sure what the problem is. I fought my trackball for over a year before I found this solution. If worse comes to worse, maybe see if you can download an image of a setup that already has the trackball working. I was able to do that early on, but in my case, the image I downloaded didn't have the safe shutdown button function, and it wouldn't work when I tried to add it. Whatever else you try, I hope it turns out to be something simple and you can enjoy your trackball. Whenever you do solve it feel free to tell me what you did here, or if you do a video, feel free to post a link. (Assuming youtube allows you to!) Sorry I can't be more helpful. Good luck! Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@augustheat]

you also should hit tab on a keyboard to get intot he game cab settings and up the sensitivy and speed on the analog controls for it to work alot better

[@ClayCarlino]

You are right about that! I did eventually make those adjustments as well, but I didn't shoot a video about it. I guess it took me SO LONG to figure just making the darn thing work, I wasn't even thinking about the fine tuning. Thanks for the info though! You are right, and it's good information. Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@augustheat]

@@ClayCarlino tell me about it! Off all week and I FINALLY got it 100% working! Today I put in a swivel arm for my Monitor. (Not a full cab but it gets the job done) great for vertical shooters!!!

[@ClayCarlino]

@@augustheat oh, what a good idea! I never thought of actually allowing the screen itself to swivel to match it to the screen orientation of the game. Good job! I may have to consider that for future mame cab projects! Thanks for the idea and congrats on getting your machine 100%! That really is an impressive accomplishment that I don't think most people truly appreciate. Good job.

[@augustheat]

@@ClayCarlino its great because you can have the games default to the way it was intended...you just have to then manualy turn the screen ;)

[@ThomasGrillo]

I tried these exact steps, and the Raspberry pie crashed, and put me on an o/s menu, which was non-responsive. Had to cold boot the pie. Thanks for the video.

[@ClayCarlino]

Oh no! Were you ever able to get it to work? It sounds like something may have corrupted the file system maybe? Hard to tell. I hope you get it resolved. Good luck! Thanks for watching and thanks for commenting!

[@ThomasGrillo]

@@ClayCarlino The Pi still works. Just, can't seem to get it to save settings, and am also finding some games in the library have no controls set, at all. Odd that the Legends Ultimate version of CoinopsX has everything working, though, albeit with severe audio lag. Hence, the reason I went with RetroPie.

[@ClayCarlino]

@@ThomasGrillo stuff like this is the maddening part of using Retropie. It takes soooo much work to get everything to work. Good luck! Thanks for the update!

[@ThomasGrillo]

@@ClayCarlino I've been noodling about with mame, since the late 90s, I'm sure I'll find a way to get that rutty trackball, and spinner to work. Though, why some games with trackball are working, albeit with slow sensitivity, and others not at all, is a big mystery. LOL

[@ClayCarlino]

@@ThomasGrillo good luck! The only advice I have is that with each success, copy an image of the ad card! It would be catastrophic to get everything working, then lose it all because the sd card got corrupted. Again, congrats on your successes and good luck on solving the rest. Thanks for sharing!

[@crashoverride576]

Yup. I followed your instructions and ya my trackball and spinner still isn't working. Drag I'm out of ideas. Good video though.

[@ClayCarlino]

That SUCKS! I wish I knew what to do. It took me a year of poking at this problem, reading forums, and getting frustrated. The maddening thing is that the trackball is effectively a mouse. That's it. Boot up Rasbian on a Raspberry Pi and amazingly enough, it works. I don't know why it's so hard in Retropie.

[@crashoverride576]

@@ClayCarlino ya it's crazy. I bought the glens retro show trackball and spinner and his 12-1 board I've done everything I've seen and read about but it just doesn't read either one. But it works perfectly on my computer. Just not on my raspberry pi 4. Ya I may have to give up on it for awhile. It just grrr. Ya know. Lol. Thank you for posting your video though. It really did help.

[@ClayCarlino]

@@crashoverride576 thanks. I wish it would have worked though. I haven't messed with the RPi4 yet. Mine are all 3B+s. I don't know if that makes a difference. But you're probably doing the right thing. Take some time away from check back in a while and see if there's new information available to try. Thanks again for your comments and experiences!

[@danielrobert6894]

that works for me.

[@ClayCarlino]

Awesome! Thanks for letting me know! Thanks for commenting!

[@jimjones6419]

Thanks for this easy to follow video. I'm following the exact steps but it isnt saving the configuration even after I change save option to on. Any ideas?

[@ClayCarlino]

Oh crap! I do not know why it wouldn't save. I know that you HAVE to go into the config settings from inside a running game, but it sounds like you're already doing that. Does it immediately forget the settings as soon as you change games? Or does it work until you turn off the cabinet then forget the next time you turn it on?

[@jimjones6419]

@@ClayCarlino I figured out that it isn't applying the settings when changed from inside the game. I believe there is general retroarch settings overriding it because when i change them there it applies to the game. Still even after following your video it didn't work. Everything was set up as you recommend but no dice. So I figured out from this videokzbin.info/www/bejne/pYC0loiYj9qXi6M that the FBAlpha emulator is the problem. Retropie is recognizing the mouse but the emulator doesn't. I will go back in and change the emulator when I get a chance and see what happens. Thanks for the response.

[@ClayCarlino]

@@jimjones6419 , Thank YOU for all the added information! I struggled with this problem on and off over the last year, and even now, there's so much to learn. Thanks for sharing!

[@ericdavidson1793]

Holy shit get to the point

[@MrPowerlyte]

Ypu ain't never lied!