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question about trackball mice
Tekn0mega:
--- Quote from: OSCAR on March 17, 2005, 08:06:38 pm ---
--- Quote from: Tekn0mega on March 17, 2005, 03:30:54 pm ---This guy does. http://www.skum.org/arcade/images/modular1.jpg I wonder how well that thing is working out for him?
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WOW, blast from the past....
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Chris:
I wore out three PC trackballs before I finally bought an arcade one. PC trackballs generally use wire-thin roller axes wth rubber rollers and no bearings. They also have tiny little encoder wheels. They're fine for games that require less trackball movement like Centipede and Missile Command, but try one in Marble Madness, World Class Bowling, Atari Football, Golden Tee Golf, etc., and you'll kill it in a big hurry. The trackball itself is also lighter and smaller in a PC tracball, usually.
A Kensington Expert Mouse is a bit better; it has larger metal rollers, although still not as heavy duty as an arcade ball. But they cost as much as a Happ trackball when they're on sale, and more than an Imperial ball.
Also, PC balls are not meant to be mounted in control panels, so you'll have to figure out how to do that cleanly.
Now, the second PC trackball I tried was the EXACT trackball you linked to. It's awful. AWFUL. It barely even turns. The ball is not as big as it looks in the pic; it's a little under 2 inches, and if you try to put a 2-1/4" arcade ball on it it sits too high to touch the rollers, even with the upper shell removed. I had to hack out most of the encoder spokes because it backspins horribly when used in an arcade fashion (arcade trackballs are very low-resolution devices.)
I did, however, rip out its motherboard to hack as my interface to the Happ trackball, so it's not a total loss.
So if you buy it for an interface hack, great, but don't be under any illusions that it's very playable. You will HAVE to remove the upper shell at a minimum because of the horrible friction.
--Chris
paigeoliver:
I hacked a PC trackball before the PS/2 arcade ones were readily available.
My install job was absolute genius (I'll explain it below), but unfortunately the ball was more useful for navigating windows then it was for actual gaming.
** The install.
I used the over popular Compusa crystal trackball, and I used some rubber floormat for overlay (I have used that on tons of machines, it is cheap, looks good on a wood panel and holds up really well), and I used foam rubber and plastic to build up the trackball top casing to a flat surface that still had clickable buttons. I installed that under the rubber overlay. The end result was that the trackball looked clean, and it had SECRET BUTTONS, which could be activated by CLICKING the correct spots on the control panel.
I loved the secret buttons. I wish I was doing a machine with that overlay again, I would give it some secret buttons too.
sodapopinski:
Aside from quality and durability, I don't think those pc mice are designed to really get spinning fast. Even, for 6$, you will probably regret you wasted 6$.
Chris:
--- Quote from: sodapopinski on March 18, 2005, 09:20:37 am ---Aside from quality and durability, I don't think those pc mice are designed to really get spinning fast. Even, for 6$, you will probably regret you wasted 6$.
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Well, it's still a USB non-optical mouse you can use as a hack to interface a real trackball... those aren't really easy to find anymore... the board is a bit big, though, compared to a mouse. In fact, to find room to install mine, I had to install it practically on top of a button, so the button passes through the trackball hole in the center of the board. :)