Pole Position Steering wheel encoder

[eightbit]

Does anyone know if I can hook this up directly to an optipac?

If I can hook it to an ipac does anybody know what the pinout is? Its the steering wheel from a stand up pole position cabinet. Would I be better off replaceing the optical encoder and pickup? I already have an optipac that I could use but I could hack a mouse or buy Oscar mouse hack.

[_Iz-]

Not sure what the chip and capacitor are for. I suspect you couldn't wire directly to the 4 pin connector because of the added electronics. You could however trace the logic and wire it without that stuff. Easiest would be to replace the optic board with a more standard one, then it would be guaranteed to work.

[OSCAR]

All the Atari optic boards I've come across so far use this standard 4-pin connection.  Unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to test a real Pole Position board, but if it follows the Atari (& Happ) convention, then the pinout for the Opti-PAC would be X1, +5V, GND, X2 based on the photo and the orientation of the friction lock.

I've seen caps on optic boards before and explanation I've heard is that they are present in the event of an AC transient voltage.  Be warned that this an explanation of EE lingo by an ME, so I may be totally off base!    The Happ optic board also has a chip and Andy W. mentioned to me before that it is a buffer and doesn't affect the operation of the optic board.  Apparently it is supposed to eliminate an occurrence of a "half-vane" in case the encoder wheel stopped right in the middle of the optics.  Sorry I don't have better info for you, but I'd bet you would be okay to connect it directly to an Opti-PAC without damaging anything.

If you don't have an Opti-PAC to test it with, I'll check it out for you if you want to send it to me.

[eightbit]

Well I hooked it up to the optipac like oscar recomended. All the mouse pointer would do is vibrate a little when I spin the wheel. I swapped the +5 and the ground and the optical encoder board starting to smoke. I switched it back to the way it was before and the mouse pointer still vibrates.

Any one have any ideas? What does the mouse pointer vibrating mean?

[GearHead]

You won't be able to plug the Pole Position board directly into the Opti-PAC off of the header.  The Pole Position board decodes the signal and sends out direction and speed information rather than just the ON/OFF data the Opti-PAC is expecting.  You should be able to tap into the board at the right places to get the signals needed.  I can't find my Pole Position board right now but give me a few days.

An alternate method I used is shown below.  I used a Happ optic board (from Bob Roberts) and performed minor surgery on it to fit the steering wheel.  I pulled the optical sensor off the board and soldered it to a wafer board from Radio Shack.  I wired that back to the Happ board and then drilled a few holes in the wafer board for the mounting screws.  The Pole Position encoder wheel is the same as the trackball wheels so it works without any other mods.  You can also use the Oscar optic board too.  Plugs right into the Opti-PAC

GearHead

[seaner]

when things start to smoke, that usually means you're not going to get it to work ever again.
The +5 and gnd pins are probably whichever pins went to either end of that polartized capacitor.  The ->->-> point towards the GND side.  The other 2 pins would likely have been your X1/X2 pins.

[_Iz-]

I had the same problem with my atari spinner, it would just "vibrate" when connected and spun. I covered every second hole in the encoder wheel with black tape and then it worked fine...  (YMMV)

(my atari optic board didn't have the chip or capacitor)

[_Iz-]

get it working eightbit?

[GearHead]

It took a few days but I found my Pole Position board and was able to get it working with an Opti-PAC.  The good news is that you may still be able to use your board even after you "smoked" it.  I'm assuming that our boards are the same...

1. Unsolder and remove all of the components except those shown here - the sensor, the resistor closest to the sensor and the 4 pin header.  You should end up with something like this...



2. Solder two wires at the locations indicated in purple.  This will connect the outputs of the sensors to the header pins.  You can double check if your board is the same as mine using this picture.



3. Change the Rotary Jumper on the Opti-PAC to A/HI



4. Connect your Opti-PAC up to the board.  Make sure you get the power supply polarity right!

Hope this helps.

GearHead