Trackman marble button wiring and other questions

[pragma]

Hello all,

This is my first post so please be gentle!  

I bought an old jamma cab, popped in a 21" Compaq P110 mounted vertically and built a celeron 1.1 system from components for the guts. It's playable now, with a J-PAC interface providing the jamma<->pc works.

I'm using software from Pivot to rotate the screen in Win98.

Of course, some of my favourite games use a trackball, and so I want to hack mine in.  I happen to have an old Logitech Trackman Marble that I'm not using that I've judged perfect for this purpose. It's much smaller than any arcade trackball, but that suits me fine since I don't want to have to build a large control panel. I've used this trackball with centipede and missile command, and it does the trick for me.

I have no idea how to rewire the buttons. From my reading, I've come to the conclusion that this must be so darn easy that no-one even bothers to ask this question. Is that true? Does anyone have a link to a how-to do this?  

Also, my current control panel appears to be steel or some other metal, painted black. I would like to keep this type of panel too, since it's thin it will make mounting the ball easier. But I've not been able to find any how-tos for drilling through this material. The cab is an old Taito cab, but it looks like the panel might not be stock.

Any help much appreciated!

Paul

[MinerAl]

I'm fairly new myself, but:  welcome!

The mouse button switches are just little microswitches.  They're the same as arcade buttons, only smaller.  There should be two poles on the bottom, and when you push the normally open (NO) switch, it completes the circuit.

To connect arcade pushbutton switches, or any other kind of switch really, all you need to do is find the two solder points where the poles of the microswitch meet the printed circuit board on the mouse, and solder your wires to them.  You don't even really need to remove the mouse's stock switches.

Make sure the wires you've soldered in connect to the arcade switch at the NO pole and the GND pole, otherwise you'll have problems.

For cutting a hole in steel, you'll want to use a hole saw, on my trackman marble the ball opening looks like it's 1 5/16ths, but a 1 3/8 would probably be fine.  I have no idea if either of those sizes of hole saw is easy to find.

[pragma]

Thanks for the input, MinerAl.

Has anyone used a hole saw through metal?  This link: http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/solutions/article/0,13422,211577,00.html seems to imply that I'm going to run into heat problems, but I don't want to get my panel and electronics behind all messed up with lube. (Yes, I intend to drill it in-place! Is that so wrong?)

Thanks for any help.
Paul

[jets]

Forget the lube. How long you think its gonna take to drill through sheet metal??? Any ways, the hole saw will use an arbor that (basically a drill bit that attaches to the hole saw) so first mark where the hole should be and use a small drill bit to make a hole. This will make drilling the final hole easier to drill. Then use the arbor/hole saw to make the real hole.