Hot Wheels Rally - can anyone help get the controls to work?

I picked up a Hot Wheels mouse like this one https://www.terapeak.com/worth/hot-wheels-computer-mouse-1996-dad/161570839182/ as it includes a Hot Wheels Rally game (see here: https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31781).

You can download the drivers CD with the game in it from this discussion thread https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31781

Now, I got the game working on Win98 virtual machine, but you can't drive the car without using the special mouse and it's custom Win3.1/Win95 drivers (although the readme file cryptically talks about using a regular mouse with "special keystrokes on your keyboard along with your regular mouse" but doesn't indicate what those are).

So I picked up said mouse. However, my main PC has no serial port. My older, WinXP machine, DOES have one, and the mouse will work, but the drivers won't install, as it says they are not for Windows XP (as they're for Win95).

I could install Win98 (might be compatible) on the old PC, but as it's a Pentium4 it generally has parts that are too new for Win98 to understand (graphics card, etc).

I even tried a PS/2-to-USB converter and managed to get mouse recognised in a virtual machine, but it still didn't work right (I had the mouse vibrate when testing it, but no action in the game at all).

Are there any hackers in here who could download the game/drivers CD above, and try to work out what the mysterious "special keystrokes on your keyboard" might be? That would be the easiest solution to at least try the game (although others noted it works in Wine, etc).

 

I'll take a look. Can't promise anything as I'm very much a beginner.

 

Anyone?

 

That's a huge request. Be patient.

I'm not committing to this, I'm interested but not at this time

 

I asked Zeus at nGlide and he found it out! To quote:

I looked at the code and here's what I found: the secret combination that activates keyboard controls is "DMW" pressed one after another without releasing.

After that you can use:

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - car speed (left click to brake)
G/L - sound effects?
S - save screenshot to windows\temp
Q - quit game
Space - next level
NUM+ - finish level
NUM- - restart level
F2 - level 2
F3 - level 3
F4 - finish game

P.S. You need a slow CPU to play the game, otherwise it won't sync properly.