Anyone ever used a Microsoft EasyBall?

[rcancro]

I made an arcade about a year ago made a cross country move and had to leave it behind.  so obviously any time i see a cheap tv with s-video or whatnot I get the little tingle deep in my stomach.

So, yesterday I was at goodwill and saw a microsoft EasyBall -- it is a trackball with a 4" ball made for toddlers I guess.  It was $5 so I picked it up thinking that perhaps I could make a trackball out of it in my next cabinet.  Has anyone done this?  How did it work?

Thanks,
ricky

[eightbit]

No reason technically while it shouldn't as long as it works as a mouse. A lot of people use the crayola kids ball as a trackball. You won't get arcade authentic feel but it will work.

[rampy]

I made an arcade about a year ago made a cross country move and had to leave it behind.  so obviously any time i see a cheap tv with s-video or whatnot I get the little tingle deep in my stomach.

So, yesterday I was at goodwill and saw a microsoft EasyBall -- it is a trackball with a 4" ball made for toddlers I guess.  It was $5 so I picked it up thinking that perhaps I could make a trackball out of it in my next cabinet.  Has anyone done this?  How did it work?

Thanks,
ricky

I'm all for attempting to hack anything and everything to try and cheaply and creatively get arcade feeling controls wherever possible... but...

I'm guessin the easyball would NOT be ideal to hack beacause of the way it "lays" in it's cradle... it's kinda loosey goosey if i remember right,  and you can't really "whiz" it.. which would be a requirement in my humble estimation...  but you actually have one so you could try... does it spin freely/nicely? if so maybe it would be a good hack canidate...

*Shrug* YMMV and wouldn't hurt to try at 5 duckets =)

rampy

[Chris]

Sometimes you can create "whiz"....

My control panel had a PC trackball ripped out of a keyboard/mouse combo.  It was a good size, about 2", but had no "whiz".

As I rebuilt my control panel, I took a closer look at my whizless trackball.  I noticed that one of the bearings didn't spin well, so I gave it a shot of WD-40, and moved the bearings around so that the best bearings were aligned vertically.

This definately helped the whiz factor, but the ball was far too light; more weight was needed to increase whiz.  I was in the process of ordering stuff from Bob Roberts anyway, so I ordered a 2-1/4" Atari trackball ball.  (Not that I can tell the difference between the trackball and a cue ball!)  The ball was larger than the plastic ball the trackball originally came with, and wouldn't reach the tiny rubber rollers, so I replaced the original rollers with sections of Pentel mechanical pencil erasers.  I also had to add a couple of washers to my mounting bolts to deal with the extra height of the ball.

Now I got a good spin, but it spun so well that backspin was a problem.  I took out the encoder wheels and carefully broke out two out of every three spokes to reduce the resolution.

Putting it all back together, I fired up Golden Tee Golf for the PC.... whizzzz!  World Class Bowling was equally whizzy!  It was a lot of work, and I did have to spend $8 in parts, but since I already had the trackball, it was still cheap.... and now I have a trackball with an authentic arcade ball and decent arcade feel....

[marcoval]

Thought I might bump this because I have the identical question. Anyone have any specific cabs that used this? I've gotten a hold of 2 of these and want to know what problems people have had.

[BobA]

I have 2 of the balls.  The trackball is basically a 1 button mouse.  It is very large to let small hands grasp it and is a hollow sphere that does not have much inertial to allow it to spin.  You can get a bit of spin out of it but it will not sustain like an arcade trackball.  

Internally it is very shall we say sparce.  The rollers and sensors are not arcade quality.  They are similar to the bits you would find inside a mouse.  

In my opinion.  They are fun to play with for a short while but I would not waste time trying to build one into a cab.  With all the work to build one into a control panel I would rather have a Wico or Happs.  I do have a Wico.

Just my personal opinion.

BobA