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| Potential for my trackball hack? |
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| gregor7777:
Here's an old thread... On a side note, I have a Kensington expert Trackball that is also very similiar to the one depicted in the authors post. Has anyone else here used a similiar Kensington trackball and successfuly installed it into their control panel? Just dropping it in would be simple enough but I fear would look out of place. Has anyone taken it apart so it sits flush with their control panel? |
| missioncontrol:
I'm planning on taking mine apart and mounting it flush...I'll let everyone know how it goes when I get it done... |
| Antiriad2097:
In priniciple it should be pretty easy to surface mount. Having taken mine apart, the top cover doesn't do much that the cp wouldn't - its basically just a retaining ring. The join of the 2 halves of the trackball shell is flat rather than curved, so should mate with the cp nicely. Its also very spacious inside, so there's plenty of room to drill through for screws to hold it to the panel (no doubt best done with it in situ so you can centre the ball in the cp hole). It'd be easy enough to wire up the buttons to arcade buttons too, but thats probably stating the obvious here. The apparent ease of fitting and the fact I got it free were the reasons I wanted to go with this ball. Fortunately, the last of my kids just left home a couple weeks ago so soon I'll have space to put a cab of my very own :) |
| gregor7777:
--- Quote from: Antiriad2097 on August 25, 2004, 03:26:26 pm ---In priniciple it should be pretty easy to surface mount. Having taken mine apart, the top cover doesn't do much that the cp wouldn't - its basically just a retaining ring. The join of the 2 halves of the trackball shell is flat rather than curved, so should mate with the cp nicely. Its also very spacious inside, so there's plenty of room to drill through for screws to hold it to the panel (no doubt best done with it in situ so you can centre the ball in the cp hole). --- End quote --- Cool, I think I may work on the trackball this weekend then. I'll take progress pics and post back if I do. |
| MinerAl:
A while back I tried the upside down optical mouse thinggy. Glassy smooth one color balls don't register very well. I had difficulty getting the "laser" centered on the ball, but for all of that I did get it to kind-of work. If you get a speckled or many colored ball you might have better luck, and if you can stand to have either L/R or U/D backwards in everything but MAME, you can probably get something cool going. I eventually just got an Opti-PAC. The best thing about those Kensington trackballs was that billiard balls fit perfectly. See if you can find a custom speckled pool ball. Good luck. |
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