Yay Me! (aka an idiot's success)

[fatfingers]

So, in true idiot style, I somehow managed to destroy the PS/2 connector on my SlikStik spinner.   !!!! 

I thought about calling SlikStik, but I had a spare mouse around (with a PS/2 connector) and I thought just maybe I could splice a new one on???  How hard could it be?  Red to red, black to black, etc., right???  Nope, the wires on the spinner weren't the same colors as for the mouse!  Yeah, right, how am I going to do this now??  And who was the idiot that didn't standardize on wire colors??  Or did they and I cannot follow it?  I don't know. 

In any case, I did some searching around for PS/2 pinouts and used whatever electrical meter thingy it is that I have and figured out which pins went to which wires in my spare mouse.  Then, I checked out the spinner and saw where the wires connected to the PCB.  I saw the number of the chip on the PCB and did a search on it and found a pinout diagram for the chip.  I located the +5v, ground, and clock and data pins on the chip and what do you know, they all went right back to where the wires connected to the board.  Because of this, I was able to figure out which wires to connect to each other, and I never even burned anything out!

Basically, I just wanted to pat myself on the back for fixing it myself and saving $100 and to let the rest of you smarties out there know that even an idiot can figure things out on their own once in a while!   

P.S. It really is true that it's more fun making/fixing things yourself!

[Apollo]

Isn't it great, well done!

[NightGod]

In the spirit of this site, you should post the pin-out information in case someone else comes looking for the info six months from now.

[fatfingers]

In the spirit of this site, you should post the pin-out information in case someone else comes looking for the info six months from now.

You are totally correct.  Here is what I found:

PS/2 male connector pinouts (looking straight at it):

                                    5              6


                            3                             4


                                    1              2


Pin 1: data
Pin 2: unused
Pin 3: ground
Pin 4: +5v
Pin 5: clock
Pin 6: unused

On my particular mouse (a Dell PS/2 mouse), the white wire is data, the red wire is +5v, the yellow wire is clock and the bare copper wire is ground.  Your mouse may or may not have the same colors/pinouts.



What my SlikStik spinner pinouts and wires are:

Chip Pin   6: ground (orange wire)
Chip Pin 11: +5v (black wire)
Chip Pin 12: data (brown wire)
Chip Pin 13: clock (red wire)

I would assume all of the SlikStick spinners have these same pinouts and wire colors, but it would be wise to check it out yourself before trusting this.

[NightGod]