Hacking a Happs Trackball.

[Mugzilla]

Once upon a time online, I saw instructions on how to tear a mouse apart and hook it's circuit card into a happs mouse. (This would eliminate the need for an OPTI-pac...

Does anyone have the instructions or experience with doing this?

[zero-one]

Hi,

I've just did one. It worked first time. I used a very old IBM PS/2 Mouse that I had laying around for the past 12 years or so.

I want to do one with a USB mouse but I haven't found a suitable one yet. I've taken apart many mice and found that Logitech mice use very fine encoder wheels and sometimes the receivers have 4 pins instead of the normal and desirable 3 pins. Therefore, I would stay away from Logitech mice for this hack.

Here are a few links to get you started:
http://www.members.shaw.ca/bakaye/tballhack.htm
http://www.mameworld.net/massive/How-to/Trackball_Hack/trackball_hack.html
http://www.mamecab.com/Howtos/How%20to%20Hack%20Happs.htm
http://www.ionpool.net/arcade/tech/Mouse_to_Trackball_Instructions.pdf

Good luck.

[zero-one]

Hi,

Found another link.

http://mamewah.mameworld.net/mousehack.html

[Zeitgeist]

Here is mine:

http://www.arcadecontrols.com/files/Miscellaneous/Mouse_to_Trackball_Instructions.pdf

Drop me an IM if you have any questions.
Enjoy
Z

Edit:
Didn't realize this when I saw Zero-One's  previous response but apparantly you already had a link to my tutorial since unbeknownst to me, it has been mirrored at this fellow's site as well :
http://www.ionpool.net/arcade/tech/Mouse_to_Trackball_Instructions.pd
I actually used all of the excellent tutorials & websites listed so far in this post, including Oscar's & some others not yet mentioned in order to write the .PDF linked above.
Z

[u_rebelscum]

http://oscarcontrols.com/DPDTswitch.shtml sort of talks about it.

[JoyMonkey]

I hacked my Happ/GT trackball a couple of weeks ago and have been having a small problem with it:

I wired it to an old PS/2 wheelmouse I had lying around and it works fine for Mame, but when using it to move around in Windows it seems to think I'm trying to use the mouse-wheel sometimes and selects windows that the mouse pointer is just passing by.

At first it was scrolling up+down randomly in a window, I installed TweakUI and disabled the wheel-scroll function and this problem cleared itself up.

But I'm still having the strange 'selecting windows I don't want to be in' problem. I removed the mouse-wheel's receiver and it's still doing it.

[Zeitgeist]

JoyMonkey,
I haven't attempted a hack on a wheel mouse yet, they were all three button PS2s & USBs so I'm not familiar with what's happening in your case.
Have you gone over all of your connections; it's a shot in the dark but perhaps two of your traces have been inadvertantly connected.
One thing I do when soldering connections that are close to one another is run an exacto knife between the traces to make sure that the solder from one connection I made didn't bleed over to the next.
If so the razor will cut it.
I dunno???
You could always try to desolder the main lead for the wheel I suppose...
Goodluck
Z

[zero-one]

Joymonkey,

Looks like you've done a good job at troubleshooting so far. The only thing I can suggest is to check that the wheel (3rd) button is not pressed somehow.

[Zeitgeist]

Zero-One,
The USB mouse that I have used on several hacked interfaces are the Kensington VaulMouse 3 button type.
Z