12/16/00 - I know that some of this
does not apply to the regular panther but I have been fooling around with the super
panther and I thought some of you would like to know what I have been doing.
The pots are always a constant source of irritation to me. They screw up and I get
drifting and other goofy problems. After my last experiment I realized that I can just use
switches for the four directional movements.
I removed the pots and installed four PC board switches under the stick. Then I assigned
the four switches to the POV hat, which I don't have any more. JOY 24, 25, 25 and 27 are
now forward, back, right and left. I installed some fixed resistors to the wires that the
pots used to connect to and set the joystick dead zone up to .75 in my config file. Now I
have reliable movements in all four directions just like the keyboard keys.
The next area that needed attention is the joystick springs. I have four springs
instead of two on the super panther. The springs would fatigue and break just like all
metal will. I had to replace them frequently and you never knew when one was going to
break.
Well I finally got rid of the metal bastards once and for all. I tore apart a
bungee cord and used the high quality rubber strips inside one of those. You get a really
nice feel from the rubber springs and they have a much greater fatigue life.
So what's left from the original panther.
-----------------------------------------------
The Trackball mechanics are gone, the optical mod is installed.
The plastic Joystick is gone, a custom joystick is installed.
The Joystick pots are gone, switches are used for movement.
So I guess that leaves the plastic outer housing, the red trackball and the circuit board
as the only original parts.
The joystick is turned off in my config file and the original trackball is turned off. I
really don't need the panther circuit board inside anymore. It would be great to get rid
of a gameport/soundcard connection and go to USB. You could use a much more reliable USB
board from any other game controller that has enough programmable switches.
In fact I have been fooling around with a USB wingman circuit board, it has a bunch of
buttons and is very small.The evolution continues!!!
|