Any feedback on the Imperial Trackball?

[MadJeff]

There's been a bunch of these trackballs on Ebay lately and I was wondering if anyone's had any experience with them, like how is the quality, do they plug into the OptiPac ok, stuff like that.

[eightbit]

I got one and overall I like it. Its got good heft to it, and a nice spin. Its not precise enough though. I have to work to hard to get it to really move. I've been experimenting with using encoder wheels with more holes and I can see promise there I just haven't gotten it working to my satisfaction.

Do a search of the board for imperial, there have been several threads on them with some in depth discussions and tips.

[Superdude]

I cant get the ball to work with advmame or dmame.  It works for everything else.  Even ADVMENU for dos.

I got one and overall I like it. Its got good heft to it, and a nice spin. Its not precise enough though. I have to work to hard to get it to really move. I've been experimenting with using encoder wheels with more holes and I can see promise there I just haven't gotten it working to my satisfaction.

Do a search of the board for imperial, there have been several threads on them with some in depth discussions and tips.

[rampy]

EEEEEEeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I only get feedback if mic up my imperial and then move the speakers too close...

Seriously though,  I have a non ps/2 imperial trackball and it works fine for me in ahdvmame and dmame (I'm using a mouse hack as an interface) although it does take some tweaking to get a given game to play right (which is tough if you haven't played a game in a long time / ever  to know how sensitive the trackball needs to be)

I know one guy on this board has some success replacing the encoder wheel with a custom "higher resolution" spoked one...

*shrug*

rampy

[gtjoe]

I bought the imperial trackball from ebay and it works fine.  It doesn't have the same feel as my spinner with the new oscar encoder wheel, so there is room for improvement.  Don't get me wrong I think its plenty useable and much better than the compusa crystal trackball I was using.

FYI the oscar encoder wheel will fit in imperial trackball, so there is a solution.  The oscar encoder wheel has 36 teeth, the imperial has 24.  I may end up ordering 2 encoder wheels to upgrade the trackball.  

I tried the encoder wheel utility and printed some onto transparencies, but the don't seem to work properly.  Oh well.

[eightbit]

Is 31 teeth enough improvement over 24? It doesn't seem like its enough difference.

[AGarv]

I've had the ps/2 version in my cab for over a year now; it works great and was a deal for the $85 I payed Imperial for it.

[MadJeff]

Is there a way to plug this into an OptiPac or do I use it strickly as a PS/2 device? I was contemplating picking up two for a two-player trackball panel, but if they are ps2 only then that wouldn't work out too well.

[rampy]

Is there a way to plug this into an OptiPac or do I use it strickly as a PS/2 device? I was contemplating picking up two for a two-player trackball panel, but if they are ps2 only then that wouldn't work out too well.

I dunno about pluggin 2 of these ps/2 versions in... but if you are NOT going to use the ps/2 plug and are gonnna buy an optipac anyways... why waste money on the ps/2 version... just go get a refular non ps/2  3" arcade style trackball from imperial betson directly... (unless the ps/2 ones are going for cheap enough on ebay -> they by all means get that and hack away...  although these go both ways don't they?  ps/2 or arcde molex or no?)

although you could, if you're a cheap sob like me get the 3" betson refurb trackball for 29.99 ... *shrug* YMMV

just my .02

rampy

[MadJeff]

There's a flood of the ps2 version on Ebay right now so you can get them fairly cheap.  

That was what I was wondering however, can these be adapted easily to the OptiPac?

[eightbit]

I got 2 of the imperials PS/2 version off ebay for $22 each. I thought it was a good deal.