Newbie needs help

Hello. I'm new to the Linux emulation scene. I've been using Mandrake linux 9.1 for quite some time. I decided to move away from booting into windows just to play video games..so I game MUPEN64 a try. I downloaded the software and everything seemed to be ok. I plugged in my Sidewinder Precision Pro joystic and configured the buttons using the built-in blight_input plugin...but...when I load up any ROM, it tells me that there is no controller detected?!? I have all libsdl things installed--they came with my install of mandrake (I installed all games by default). I even tried compiling my own blight_input-0.0.8b but the same thing happened.. Please! I'd like any help that can be offered. Thank you.

blight said:

In the input plugin config dialog, click into the "Plugged" toggle-button right below the "Controller 1" - this will enable the controller

Click to expand...

DOH!

(proceeds to find a nice clear wall to repeatedly bang head against)

That works...Quest64 plays quite nicely...though my sidewinder is a bit unresponsive in some cases..hmm....maybe it's time to throw it out.....

Also...does anyone have a precompiled binary for the alsa output plugin? I can't compile it for some reason--i guess I don't have the dev libraries installed..

Doomulation said:

You know that the sidewinder control collects dirt in itself all the time...so if it's unreponsive, it might be time to clean it! With my sidewinder (normal one only), i took a needle and used it in the small springs to clear out it all. It works perfecly after!

Click to expand...

Hmm...very interesting. I'll give this a whirl. As far as responsiveness it's decent but could be better. What really puzzles me is that the hat-switch (i've got it mapped to the 4 C-buttons) only responds to 2 of the buttons..not all 4. Maybe this is my configuration but i'll give the cleaning a try and see what happens.