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| FIXED! (New Happ arcade trackball quickly stops working in Y-axis direction) |
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| unclet:
I bought a brand new Happs 2-1/4" arcade trackball (two "green" optic boards) from Ebay and connected it to a hacked USB mouse. I connected the trackball to the USB mouse hack via a serial cable connector so I can disconnect the two parts if I needed to in the future. The first time I plugged in the mouse to test the trackball I found that the X-axis worked fine but the Y-axis did nothing. A quick look at the PCB resulted in me seeing the molex 4-pin connector was not on correctly. The connector was shifted over by one pin so the red power wire was sending 5V to through the wrong pin on the optic PCB. As a result, the Y-axis PCB got very hot. The guy from Ebay was nice and sent me a replacement optic board which I then installed, however I now have a new problem. When plugging in my USB mouse the trackball works fine in both the Xaxis and Yaxis direction. However, the Y-axis movement stops working in about 15 seconds. I can connect the trackball USB mouse hack into the computer and roll the trackball up/down and see my WinXP mouse cursor go up and down. While rolling the trackball up/down the movement starts to deteriorate until it hardly works at all going up/down. The X-axis (left/right) remains working no problem all the time. The trackball USB mouse connection is connected directly to the computer (ie: no USB HUB). Any ideas what is going on? Do I have a bad mouse hack, bad Y-axis PCB board or something else? I either want to buy another optic PCB board for the Y-axis or get rid of the mouse hack altogether and use something like an OptiWiz. |
| unclet:
I connected my trackball USB mouse hack to another computer and it works fine forever. The Y-axis never goes bad. What the heck does this mean? Is there a problem with me sending 5V through one of the thin serial cable wires? Also, I have one 5V wire coming from the hacked mouse PCB and this one wire gets split to provide 5V to both PCBs of the trackball. Not sure if this matters somehow. Ugh, I have no idea what is going on here. |
| unclet:
If I disconnect\reconnect my serial cable connectors (connecting the trackball and the USB mouse hack together) then the Y-axis starts working for a bit but eventually stops working again. I was thinking about getting rid of using the serial cable as a connector and simply wire the trackball directly to the mouse hack to see if this fixes the problem, although before I go through the trouble of doing this I want to understand why the trackball mouse hack works fine on my other computer in my house all the time. Perhaps my power supply in my arcade computer is causing this problem? |
| ubiquityman:
Try this: 1. Switch the optical boards for the X & Y and see if the problem follows the boards or if it stays with the Y-Axis. a. If it swaps to the X, then it's a Happ optical board issue. b. If it stays with the Y, then it might be a mouse controller problem. If you can, next swap the X & Y connections on the mouse controller. If the problem stays with the same axis, then you have a mouse controller problem. If the problem switches axis, then you have an optical transceiver problem. (not the red board, but the IR transmitter/receiver) |
| unclet:
I swapped the molex connectors (ie: reconnected them to the opposite PCB boards) and the problem remains on the Y-axis, so I guess this means my trackball and optical boards are working properly and the problem is with the mouse (or mouse hack) somehow, correct? If this does mean it definitely is the mouse then I am not sure it is worth my time trying to figure out exactly what is wrong with the USB mouse hack. I might just get an Optiwiz and call it a night. I just want to make sure before I spend more money. So, are you saying that since I switched the trackball molex connectors to the opposite PCB boards and saw the problem stays with the Y-axis then it must be my mouse having the trouble? I still do not understand why the trackball and USB mouse hack connection works fine on my other computer all the time. How can this be explained? |
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