PC Trackballs FA

[tmasman]

I'm not sure if any of the rest of you are interested, but I just bought a PC trackball to hack for my first MAME machine... The ball is 2 1/4". and at $13.49 (WITH shipping) I couldn't pass it up...

They have 19 more at this Buy it now auction too... It ends in 3 days, so I doubt I'd get it in to report on it before the auction ends... But I'll let you know how it goes when it gets in...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2737696403



Any body else seen any good buys on ebay lately?

~ tmasman

[tmasman]

You guys ona budget really missed out if you didn't get in on this one...
I just received it this morning (So I haven't had a chance to check it out yet), but this thing is alot bigger than it looks in the pictures. It's got a heavy (almost as heavy as a pool ball) 2.25" trackball. I'm going to replace mine with an 8 Ball!

I'll let you know how it goes...

~ tmasman

[jerryjanis]

You can still get 'em here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=11193&item=2739632038

[tmasman]

DON'T DO IT!!!
My deepest appologies...
These things were probably meant to be used with some odd POS type system... There are no drivers for it anywhere and it definately isn't plug&play.

Although this is going to turn out to be a very interesting hack... (I don't have $$ to throw around, so I'm gonna have to make due with what I've got... That means I've gotta figure this thing out well enough to hack it to a regular mouse...  At least that's the plan for now...)

Again, I'm sorry for recomending something that I hadn't yet received & tried out. But I'll keep you informed about my hacking attempts.

~ tmasman

[BobA]

The auction states that the PCTRAC trackballs are 100% microsoft mouse compatiable.  You should not need a driver to get it to work in any flavour of windows.   Under dos you just need a regular ms mouse driver.

Are you sure yours is functioning properly?

BobA

[Chris]

I did find a review of one of these somewhere that said:

The Microspeed PC-Trac has the worst performance data encountered. The trackball was inspected after 3 hours on the exerciser machine and the ball motion was greatly affected. There appeared to be a buildup of plastic material on the ball itself, indicating significant wear on the plastic ball-support collars. After a total of only 17 hours on the exerciser, the trackball was found to be unusable. The ball support mechanism, which consists of 0.3" diameter plastic collars mounted on 0.06" diameter metal shafts, had worn very badly. The cylindrical support collars actually developed flat spots where the plastic had broken away. The beige plastic ball had a layer of black plastic material on it, evidence of the support collars deteriorating.

Of course, this "review" was from a manufacturer of heavy-duty trackballs, so it was hardly unbiased...

These things were probably meant to be used with some odd POS type system... There are no drivers for it anywhere and it definately isn't plug&play.

The ones at the auction you listed are serial; if you have a USB pointing device or an Act-Labs gun on your system, it may not be recognized.  In addition, your serial port may not be configured properly, or it may be disabled in your BIOS.

--Chris

[tmasman]

I contacted MicroSpeed and it turns out that this mouse should work fine with Win3.1, 95 & 98.
I'm running Win2K, so when I couldn't even get the computer to see that there is something plugged in I thought I'd made a booboo.

This isn't that bad though because I planned on using Win98 on my arcade machine, but I don't have access to a win98 machine right now.

----------------------
I did notice the insides of the TB seemed to be poorly made... (read cheap).
I figured I'd end up replacing the rollers with something else if it caused me any trouble.

And about that "review"...
17 hours of continuous use on an "exercize machine" would wear down ANY mouse!!!
Sheesh...

(Again... I'm sorry for all the uninformed posts... I tend to jump the gun with some things...)

[AlanS17]

if it's just a mouse i see no reason why it wouldn't work in Win2K. PS2, USB, and serial all work. What would make this thing so special that it wouldn't?

[tmasman]

I have no idea why it would work with Win2K, but it doesn't.
MicroSpeed says you can get a firmware upgrade for $24 to get it to work with Win2K/XP.

Seems like if it was "Microsoft Mouse" compatible it shouldn't have this sort of problem...
Oh well... Like I said, I'm planing on using Win98 on my cab anyhow. We'll see...

~ tmasman