hacking Atari CX80 trackball

asteroid · Post by **asteroid** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:24 pm

hello there,

Im new to this but love this kinds of hacking of old and new technology together.

this was a project I started two years ago. I want to make my CX80 trackball work on USB.

I have slaughtered three iMac-esque blue usb ball mice, but no closer to getting the some USB electronics put inside the trackball and making the original optical thingies work with the spindle wheels in the Atari trackball controller.

I will cover in more detail later this week what I have tried so far,

has anyone else done one of these beasts? They are a wonderful piece of engineering, nice heavy contruction with a proper pool ball.

bgnome · Post by **bgnome** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 7:01 pm

i think i know what you are talking about. i did something similar a while back:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.p ... #msg180484

it is fairly simple as far as i can remember. all you need to do is desolder the optics from the usb mouse and solder the optics from the atari trackball to the board. it is a fairly straightforward substitution. i think the mouse i had used had an extra pin on the optics, but it was just ground. make sure to tie the trackball optics to the usb +5v and ground as well.