How to use mouse scroll wheel as a paddle?

[regimm]

I've been looking on the internet for ways to make a USB Paddle Controller to use on the stella emulator on the PC... or maybe play arkanoid on the MAME arcade emulator.
So I thought of using a mouse scroll wheel (scroll key), adapting this wheel to work as a paddle, placing it in a horizontal position inside a box, perhaps...
But I think there would have to be: either a modification in the stella/mame emulator to accept the mouse wheel as a paddle, or create a driver for Windows to understand the mouse wheel as a steering wheel....
Does anyone have any suggestions?

[+Stephen Moss]

You do know that the mouse can already be used as a controller Options-Input-Inputs-Mouse, using X direction movement to control paddle in Breakout.

 

If you specifically want to be able to use the mouse scroll wheel, I don't think that is possible, at least not easily. The first problem with anything USB is that for anything new/unique to work properly you have to program it with a descriptor that tell the PC what type of device it is it, how many configurations it has and what the current configuration is, and you may also have to write a driver for it.

 

You could try bodging mouse, and that would be easier if it were an old serial mouse as they were basically upside-down trackballs using optical rotary encoder like the scroll wheel so you could simple patch the connection across. But modern opto-reflective mice are different making such a patch very difficult to achieve, consequently even if it were possible I think it would be more effort than it was worth.