Need help with serial Crystal Trackball & XP

[nickbuol]

I am building my 2nd cabinet, so I sold my original cabinet that I built like 6 years ago to a guy at work.  Anyway, he wanted a little fast PC than what I had in it, so I put in his 1.4GHz computer which is running a clean install of Windows XP Home.

Anyway, I installed everything and plugged in the PC into the cabinet.  Everything worked except for the Crystall trackball (from CompUSA years ago).

It doesn't even light up, so it is not even being seen by Windows.

If searched online and found the drivers from CompUSA's web site, but they do not state which version of Windows they work with.  I installed the drivers, rebooted, no luck.

I opened a command prompt, and ran the DOS driver ("mouse.exe /1", the /1 is for serial port 1)...  The trackball lit up and when I pressed buttons, the trackball changed colors, but the mouse still wouldn't move and pressing the buttons didn't seem to do anything either (besides changing the color)...

I have everything done and ready for delivering this to him tomorrow, but I need the trackball working.

Please Help!

[markb]

If the trackball is that old there is a very good chance it will not be XP compatible.
Because XP 'talks' differently to hardware than say Windows98 A lot of older hardware just won't work and drivers cannot be written for them. I have an excellent steering wheel that has this problem so I had to stick with Windows 98.

You could try running the driver software in compatibility mode for Windows 98 though, this might work. Also if it is a serial or PS2 connection another longshot is to try a convertor plug to change it to USB.

[nickbuol]

Well, I delivered the cabinet today and told him his options.  He is going to try an adaptor first, and if that doesn't work, install Windows 98 since that is what the drivers are written for anyway for the trackball.

Thanks for the tip on the adaptor, and the splash of common sense that I needed in regards to Windows (I feel kinda dumb that I didn't put 2 and 2 together and say to myself, hello self, if the trackball worked under Windows 98 before, and I have a driver for Windows 98, to just install Windows 98...)

Thanks Markb

[AlanS17]

Did you install the XP yourself? Is it possible that the drivers for the serial ports were not installed properly?

[Lilwolf]

btw, you DO need a special driver for it.

I have it at home (somewhere) burned it onto a CD because my girls computer didn't have internet access when I tried to install it.

Anyway, you wont get it to work anywhere without the driver... And I've never tried it on XP... I don't think you'll have any luck though..

[AlanS17]

<grumbles>non-standard hardware</grumbles>

[nickbuol]

Well, he is going to try the serial to PS/2 adaptor tonight, and also try running the driver in "compatability mode" per suggestion of someone else at work.  I told him to quit messing around and just install Windows98 and be done with it. 

As for XP, it is a solid install by me.  I've been in PC, network, server support since 1994, and even if I hadn't been, to me it seems hard to mess up a Windows XP install, but I guess you never know....

I am no longer worried about it since I gave him my suggestions and the drivers for it.  It is up to him now.

Thanks for the ideas everyone.