Happ Trackball issues, drivers, inverting X axis, serial support?

[jelwell]

I bought a 2 1/4" Happ Trackball kit on ebay that came with a harness to support a ps/2 connection, or with a little adaptor a serial port. (Not the newer USB / PS/2 y adaptor version).

1) In order to get the ps/2 connection to work, I have to plug a "real mouse" in (I'm using an old logitech mouseman), then reboot and after Windows XP (SP2) recognizes the logitech mouse I hot-unplug the logitech mouse and plug in the trackball. Simply plugging in the Happ Trackball and rebooting does not work, nor does plugging it in and trying to do a hardware detection or going through the process of trying to add a new device, nor does the happ trackball show up if I go into the Mouse Control panel window.

2) With the ps/2 connection, for whatever reason, the X axis is inverted. I can't figure out why, there's a slim chance I mounted it incorrectly, but the Y axis is fine.
A) This makes it very difficult to use the trackball as a mouse in windows.
B) However Mame supports inverting any axis, so it's not a huge problem.
     aa) But Hamsterball does not! So I'd really like a fix.

2) There's a serial adaptor, and WindowsXP recognizes the trackball as a serial mouse (after a reboot) without any hot-swapping.
A) However, the X axis doesn't work so well in serial mode, I have a feeling it can't pull enough power over the serial port. So I can try buying an external power supply - which the trackball has a connector for.

Is there a driver that I can install that will solve either 1 or 2. And does anyone have any experience with 3? For 2, I read somewhere that I can swap pin 2 and 4, but the pins don't pull out of the connector easily/smoothly - and I'd like to get some verification before I swap the pins and blow out my precious trackball.
Joseph Elwell

[maraxle]

2) With the ps/2 connection, for whatever reason, the X axis is inverted. I can't figure out why, there's a slim chance I mounted it incorrectly, but the Y axis is fine.
A) This makes it very difficult to use the trackball as a mouse in windows.
B) However Mame supports inverting any axis, so it's not a huge problem.
     aa) But Hamsterball does not! So I'd really like a fix.

2) There's a serial adaptor, and WindowsXP recognizes the trackball as a serial mouse (after a reboot) without any hot-swapping.
A) However, the X axis doesn't work so well in serial mode, I have a feeling it can't pull enough power over the serial port. So I can try buying an external power supply - which the trackball has a connector for.

For 2, I read somewhere that I can swap pin 2 and 4, but the pins don't pull out of the connector easily/smoothly - and I'd like to get some verification before I swap the pins and blow out my precious trackball.

I just cut the wires on the adapter and switched them.  Problem solved, though not pretty.

[jelwell]

I thought I should comment that I solved my problem.

I did cut the wires and swap them to fix the inversion of the one axis.

To solve not having to swap out with a mouse, I bought the (USB based) power adaptor and plugged the trackball into the Serial port on my PC. (The happs kit came with a ps/2 to serial adaptor).

Joseph Elwell.