$3.95 for a PC track ball!

[creatine28]

Thought someone might be interested in these.  I was just at th store yesterday, and they looked pretty good for only 3.95!

http://www.softwareandstuff.com/h_acc_mactrack.html

[marcoval]

Sweet, these seem like the ones that are currently OOS at outpost.com.

[Chris]

I have one of these, they're not great... I'll probably use the board of mine for a mouse hack to an arcade trackball...

--Chris

[shmokes]

Has anyone mounted one of these inconspicuously on a control panel with only the ball showing through the top of the panel?  I'd like to do this for my steering wheel panel -- not for trackball games, but for mouse support, since my 270 degree steering wheel will probably be used more for Windows games than Mame games.  I need to be able to navigate menus in bad programs that can't be navigated with the wheel.

I've already got a few of them...ordered from Outpost when they were available.  I've got the part, just not the skills.  Any help?

[Chris]

The problem is that the way these are designed, there is a ton of friction.  If you remove the upper part of the shell and lube the moving parts a bit, it works much better, but you'll have a lot of backspin.  I had to break out every other tooth on the optical encoder wheel, which helps reduce the backspin at the expense of sensitivity... but I still ended up not installing it in my panel.

I'll probably buy the $25 arcade trackball from Wico and hack it to the board of this trackball.

--Chris

[NAH]

Chris or Shmokes:

How big is the diameter of this trackball?

[Chris]

About 2".

[shmokes]

Yes...1.999 inches is the largest reading I could find with my calipers.

I'm not worried about backspin as I want to mount this purely for cursor navigation on a panel with a steering wheel.  I plan to play a lot of Windows games with the wheel in addition to Mame and many games have menus that cannot be navigated with the wheel.  

[Chris]

In that case, it should be fine if you remove the upper cover...

--Chris

[SNAAAKE]

I have a question.  
These work as a mouse right?
I get to control windows with this trackball right(USB)?
How would it be to mount the trackball?any link for a similer trackball installation??
I really dont care about trackball games but it would be nice if I install this and use for navigation.
Anyone ?

[nullb0y]

is this an actual store or do i have to e-buy it i like the way it looks and it might work good if hacked around a bit ... just curious i broke my old trackball thewheels went flying

[shmokes]

I took one apart last night and I think it will be really easy to mount.  Not sure about the buttons.  There are tiny little microswitches soldered to the circuit board.  I'd like to desolder them and wire regular happ pushbottons in their place, but that's kind of beyond my skill.

At any rate, If you just router the correct depth recess from the bottom of your panel and drill a hole about 2 1/8, maybe 2 1/16" through the panel I think you'd be set for just windows navigation.