MIssile command Trackball

[coorslight]

I have an Atari 4 1/2 inch Trackball that was originally in a Missile Command game. I was wondering if anyone has ever hacked one of these to use with a PC in Mame. Any help with this would be really appreciated thanks.

[paigeoliver]

Judging from the date on that board it probably came from an Atari Football.

It should still be a standard trackball, and still be interfaceable any way a standard trackball can be interfaced.

[cw]

I just took a mouse.. opened it up and pulled the board out.  Pull the optics off of the board and put them on your own boards that you can make yourself from a bit of waferboard that you can pick up from ratshack. It might take a few min to get the optics in the right place but its not that hard.... Once your optics are mounted you can just run jumper wires back to the encoder board of the mouse.  I have 3 tracks that I have hacked this way.. a 2.25" a 3" and a 4.5" like you have....

hope this helps

cw

[RayB]

It should still be a standard trackball, and still be interfaceable any way a standard trackball can be interfaced.

Keep in mind, the average trackball optic board has 4 connections to it (2 for power, 2 for the signal), yet the one he's posted here has 10! So how would you connect that to an optipac??

[MinerAl]

I have interfaced one of these (an atari football one) to an Opti-Pac  There's a thread about it from a few years ago.

Even though the board pictured in the other thread is a c.1979 board, I have a '78 board that looks identical to the ones you have and it works fine.

I have a lot of posts about giant trackballs from back then, and some of them might help you.  Here are a couple:

"Giant Balls!"

"My Giant trackball"

[coorslight]

Cool Thanks for all the info guys.

[paigeoliver]

As for the 10 pins, you are just looking at Atari overengineering in action.