Trackball questions

[RTSDaddy2]

I swear, I read the book, but as I'm getting ready to start building the control panel, I keep seeing things that are leaving me confused.

It talks about tapping into the power source of the computer itself to get the opticals reading in the trackball and not running the trackball to the USB port, or more specifically the possibility of frying the motherboard if you do hook the track up to the USB port. 

What I'm curious about is this.  You run the trackball through the Opti-Pac, which can connect to a USB hub...am I still going to need a power source for the trackball, or will the Opti-Pac provide it without fear of knocking out my motherboard?

Thanks for all the help,  as always!

RTSDaddy2

[namedos]

First off it depends on what kind of trackball you have (speaking from costly experience).  If you have a new Happ's trackball that already has a USB connection then you don't need an Opti-pac.  You just plug it directly into your USB port and your computer reads it as a mouse.  Real easy and real slick. 

This is the setup I have and it draws it's power from the USB port.

[RTSDaddy2]

Thanks namedos - I knew I'd missed something.   

One final quick question, as I've looked at Happ's page this morning.  Did you - or anyone else - that's using this setup have any problem with Windows XP recognizing all three buttons?  I read where you may get a message saying "insert windiskxx", or something like that, on Happ's page.  Basically you're installing a new driver, which makes sense, but I didn't know if my "preloaded" XP already had that file or not.

RTSDaddy2

 

[namedos]

Can't help you much there as I'm running windows ME.  I was concerned about the setup and it turned out to be a non-issue.  With the Happ trackball there is a set of connectors that you hook up to the two mouse buttons.  I then assigned the middle mouse button to the same thing that slikstik used which is the 2 SW 8 key ( I think).  This allows me to use the left and right mouse button for all things you need a mouse for.  This arrangement with no other modifications allows me to play centipede and missle command.  Any other individual games can be modified with the individual game file in mame.

[RTSDaddy2]

Sounds good - thanks for your help!

RTSDaddy2