Dr. D was luck enough to win one of Druin's SNK LS30 Rotary Joystick to MAME Interfaces on E-bay, and wrote up a review.  Thanks Dr. D!

I was the lucky winner of Druin's Rotary Interface on E-bay. I promised I'd put up my thoughts on it when I got it working.

Here's my set up: I have an I-PAC encoder and I'm using two Ikari Joysticks (yellow tops, that rotate $9.95 each). 2 player, 6 buttons each and a coin door.   One spinner and one track ball (sharing a PS/2 port with the Y-Mouse cable)

The joysticks connect just like standard ones up/down/left/right. Then there is a 13 pin connector with rainbow colored wires connecting to it. This cable connects to the pins on Druin's Rotary Interface (RI).

The RI requires +5 volts so I connected a cable to the +5 / GND from the PC (from a spare disk drive cable). The two wires connect to the RI. There are 8 connectors on the RI for P1 left/right and P2 left/right. They hook up just like buttons. I used buttons 7/8 on the I-PAC for the RI. So a ground wire from the I-PAC to the GND of each connector on the RI, then the four wires from the I-PAC P1 7/8 & P2 7/8 to the remaining connectors.

That's it. If you've wired up an I-PAC then this is pretty straight forward. The only problem that I had was that the cable has an end that is marked for the joystick. I had it reversed and it didn't work. READ DRUIN'S INSTRUCTIONS. I didn't.

In the end it generates keystrokes c/v and j/l to twist left/right.

I hooked it up last night and played XYBOTS for real (one of my favorites in college). I also tested it in Ikari Warriors and it works great. I had to program the c/v/j/l to the right MAME keys but that was pretty straight forward. I also adjusted the key speed in Ikari Warriors to get one twist to turn the correct distance.

I haven't tried it but you could probably use this like a poor man's spinner for games like pole position. Or a game where two spinners are needed. Provided you didn't need to spin it, but just twist it.

BTW, I have a very tight control panel, a japanese sit down model, and I was afraid the joysticks wouldn't fit because they are pretty deep but they did.

Druin was very helpful in working with him. The only problem that I had was with the check that I wrote. He's in Cananda and I'm in the US so they put a 30 day hold on the check. It wasn't his fault and had we known before that we could have made different arrangements. So just keep that in mind.

Other than that I think it is a great product. I couldn't get the right feel without this interface. If any one has any questions or wants me to test a game let me know. Thanks Druin!!

Druin's SNK LS30 Rotary Joystick to MAME Interfaces