A little help please...re: kidsball

[S2Martin]

Hi guys,
I'm in the middle of getting all my bits together to build a cab and was searching for a cheap trackball to get me going until funds allow something decent..

Anyway on eBay i got 3 genius kidsballs for £5/$10 now my only problem is here is that the PC i am using to go in the cab has vista ultimate on it (cab PC specs are core duo 2ghz? 2GB ram, ati x1950 512MB and 320GB sata ) but i can not find a driver anywhere for this kidsball that works in vista?
The kidsball all use a serial lead but i bought the 3 of them in case i have to do some bodging?

Anyone able to help?

Cheers
Mart

[Teebor]

Lots of things you can do with the kidsball

I think you can modify it to work with an optipac iirc but that requires a lot of changes.

Found the link for you http://1uparcade.robandmitsue.com/projects-kidsball2.html

There is also instructions on that site on how to slim down the trackball so you can mount it on a control panel.

You shouldn't need a driver for it as (hopefully) Vista will detect it as a mouse.  Certainly had no problems under XP but if you use an optipac then you will not have any trouble anyway one would expect

[S2Martin]

Thanks for that 

Looks a little too deep for me but then i guess thats why i bought 3 of them lol..

Do you think i could do that but not use the optipac and use a normal mouse lead?

for the sake of £2 i have just ordered a serial to ps/2 cable from Ebay so i can see if that makes any difference.

Mart

[ErikRuud]

I can't be sure about Vista, but it should work with a generic serial mouse driver.

I used one on my cab for quite a while and I was reasonably happy with it.  I did not hack mine up as mush as 1Up did.

I soldered wires to the pins of the mouse button switches so that I could hook up regular arcade buttons.

I also cut away a portion of the lower half of the case to slide one of the angle aluminun pieces through.

You can see it in these photos. The last one is diagram of how I attached it to the CP.

[S2Martin]

Thanks Erik,

After reading that i thought actually since plugging it in i have not done a restart so i did a restart and hey ho the kids ball is working via the generic mouse driver 

Yeah i see your pics and good idea about the buttons and the cutting so i guess now i have to rethink my cp.

Mart