What wires go where? Mouse trackball hack.

[ptistheboss]

Hi all, Im trying to hack a mouse to my betson imperial trackball. I know where to put the x/y connectors, but I'm not sure about the red and black power wires. Anyone know where to connect the red and black wires?

[BobA]

If it is a PS2 connector you can meter the connector on the computer to the one on the board to find out which are the +5 and GND. Here is a link to PS2 connector (mini din) info  link.    If you don't want to do that another easy way would be to connect the +5V to the +on the cap beside the chip and gnd to the other pin on the cap.  Right now this is only a guess as you have not shown the circuit side of the board.

[DaOld Man]

I agree with Bob, just flip the board over and follow the traces from the capacitor. There should be a point somewhere that you can solder to, such as a resistor lead.
Check out this webpage, it has a pretty good picture:
http://www.willcoxonline.com/mame/controlpanel/controlpanel.htm

[ptistheboss]

Got it working, thanks for the advice.

Now I just have to get it working right.

[DaOld Man]

What I did on my first hack was to connect the wires from the mouse hack to the trackball using twist on wire nuts. I then plugged the mouse into my PC. I tested the trackball movements, then swapped the wires around until it worked right.

I then soldered and heat shrinked the connections.
Just be careful messing with the wires while its plugged into the PC, the best way to do it is unplug it first, but this can be time consuming for a PS/2 plug, cause you might have to reboot the PC each time.  But taking the time is better than shorting out your PC.