what does am opti-pac really do?

[jippie]

I'm trying to connect an old trackball I had from the old days to my xbox.
I have a gamepad I've opened up and I'm planning on using it.
On the trackball I had 4 wires +x, -x, +y & -y.

Me thinking this would be easy I just connect these wires to to the buttons left right up & down.
Yeah right
It does something but not great.
I started looking around and found the opti-pac, and thought I need to make something a bit the same.
I'm not interest in spending money, I just want same way to convert the  +x, -x, +y & -y to work as the same way a button presses.

Any help?

jippie

[Kremmit]

An Opti-Pac will make your trackball into a PC mouse, more or less. 

I don't know of any way to turn a PC mouse into X-box button presses.

[elvis]

An optipac converts optical sensory information about a moving plane/disc into an analogue directional movement.  Analogue means an infinite range of inputs based on the strength/speed the sensor sees.

Wiring optical/analogue devices to digital switches won't help you much.  Digital means on/off.  There's no half-way point.  So you'll find that subtle movements on an optical device in a digital port may not work at all, and feirce movements only register as a single speed.  Translated into layman speak, that downright sucks for gaming.

Without knowing anything about how a XBox controller works, you *might* be able to wire an optical device to the XBox's analogue inputs.  But again, I'm saying this withut any knowledge of what voltages they expect, and what the optipac pushes out.  You'll have to do some googling to confirm that.

[_) (V) (-)]

Man the search feature on this site bites it!

Sorry to revive this ancient thread guys but I coudn't find the one for posting pics either. 

Jippie, here is the photo of the trackballs I have to offer you.