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Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: Apollo on February 04, 2004, 10:17:23 pm

Title: OSCARS USB interface or Opti-Pac for spinner?
Post by: Apollo on February 04, 2004, 10:17:23 pm: I'm sure this has been discussed --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type-- but any ideas which one is better performance wise or are they pretty similar. Any ideas?
Keep in mind I'm not planning on installing a track-ball.
Cheers
Title: Re:OSCARS USB interface or Opti-Pac for spinner?
Post by: OSCAR on February 04, 2004, 10:29:17 pm: Both are seen by your PC as a standard pointing device and use native Windows drivers. Thus performance-wise, they are identical.

The Opti-PAC has distinct advantages such as it allows multiple devices, where a simple mouse hack is really only capable of a single device unless you include a switch (http://www.oscarcontrols.com/DPDTswitch.shtml) or use Analog+ to use (2) spinners with a spinner on each axes.
Title: Re:OSCARS USB interface or Opti-Pac for spinner?
Post by: Apollo on February 04, 2004, 10:33:24 pm: Thanks OSCAR (very prompt, lol).
I'm only adding one spinner so I'll be ordering the USB interface and spinner soon. Cheers.
Title: Re:OSCARS USB interface or Opti-Pac for spinner?
Post by: Lilwolf on February 05, 2004, 12:05:00 pm: One thing I really see as the best part of the optipac is for each trackball, you can have two spinners on the SAME mouse!

And when you move one... the other is disabled... So someone touching your trackball doesn't mess up your arkanoid game.

But for down right quick and dirty... Oscars are a nice.

btw... Oscar... have you planning on selling a seperate cable set for people hacking a trackball? One with combined ground?
Title: Re:OSCARS USB interface or Opti-Pac for spinner?
Post by: CCM on February 05, 2004, 12:17:25 pm: If you're only going to have a spinner, I'd go the Oscar route, but for Trackballs and spinners, Opti-pac is the way to go...
Title: Re:OSCARS USB interface or Opti-Pac for spinner?
Post by: OSCAR on February 05, 2004, 07:28:54 pm: Quote from: Lilwolf on February 05, 2004, 12:05:00 pm
btw... Oscar... have you planning on selling a seperate cable set for people hacking a trackball? One with combined ground?

I already offer a cable to connect to a trackball that has the standard 6-pin Molex connector to my USB mouse. This allows you to simply plug in your trackball without modifying anything. Is that what you mean?
Title: Re:OSCARS USB interface or Opti-Pac for spinner?
Post by: Ted_Striker on February 06, 2004, 10:48:57 am: I skipped the optipac and use a ps2 betson trackball and an oscar usb hack for my model3 spinner. both super simple to wire and work great together. You can mess up my tempest game by moving the trackball. My daughter is an expert at this. Damn 2 year old seems to know exactly when to move me the opposite direction :). So that disable feature of optipac would be pretty nice, but I just went a different route. I like what I have.
Title: Re:OSCARS USB interface or Opti-Pac for spinner?
Post by: crashwg on February 06, 2004, 11:00:56 am: Ted, I'm about 80% sure you could just ad a switch to the "-" power wires running to the optics on the TB to dissable it, if you want to that is...