X-Arcade Tankstick Unboxing

Hey all,

My new Tankstick arrived today, courtesy of XGaming.com. They have asked me to test it and get it running on the Raspberry Pi. I only had a couple minutes to play with it, but I made a little unboxing video for everyone:

Size comparison of the Pi versus a Tankstick:

tankstick
This thing has some heft to it!  With the few minutes I got to use it, I notice why some users of the Raspberry Pi are having difficulties making it work right.  It’s nothing wrong with the device, but with the way some of the software interprets the inputs.  I have a couple of hunches and ideas on how to fix it, which I hope to get to within the next week.

PiMAME 0.5 is also coming along nicely.  I’m reverting back to the 0.3 stack and just adding some minor modifications.  That should be released on Friday.

-Shea

3 thoughts on “X-Arcade Tankstick Unboxing

  1. Nice Joystick! 😀

    Now finally i’ve all near to work (except the ESC option in mame to change game) i can’t map with advmame.rc

    And i also need to configure the mouse, but i think that it will be easy too.

    Waiting for the new PiMame 😀

  2. I have one of these. REFUSES to work on any PC I try it on for any reason. It worked once, though for some reason the P1 joystick uses numpad 8, 6, 2, and 4 for up, right, down, and left, even though MAME has not used those keybindings for several years.

    Anyway, the PS2 interface doesn’t work, the USB interface doesn’t work, and the joystick microswitches might require adjustment (Bend the metal bars) so that they feel right to you and/or don’t get stuck on or off.

    I’m going to replace the “brain” of my x-arcade with an i-pac from ultimarc.com and I probably won’t be buying any more x-arcade hardware until I know they’ve actually made hardware that doesn’t choke on certain actions anymore (quick LRLRLR action on my P1 causes odd behavior, and it stops accepting joystick movement and button presses at all for a noticable amount of time.)

    Physical stuff is good, user fixable when not. electronics, in my case, are complete rubbish, and I’m replacing that crap with something I know works well.

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