BigO Posted November 23, 2015 Author Share Posted November 23, 2015 (edited) System buttoned up. Protoboards all put away. Can now use the same CX-53 to play: *Standard 5200 games *2600 quadrature (ST Mouse) trackball games *2600 Direction+Clock (CX-22) trackball games (Amiga Mouse compatible cable hasn't been built, but it's the same as quadrature with some wires switched around.) I think I'll leave the 25 pin cable full length and make stubby adapters. Right now, I have a 6ft cable coming off of the Trak-Ball and 5 or 6 foot cables making up the adapters. I don't need to be 10 - 12 feet away from the console. Too much wire to keep up with. Edited November 23, 2015 by BigO 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 I know it's a little late now that you've added the 25-pin Dsub, but you could've just kept the stock 15-pin cable and added a female 9-pin D-sub for the Atari 2600/7800. Genesis extension cables are cheap and plentiful. Other than that, this project is awesome sauce! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigO Posted November 23, 2015 Author Share Posted November 23, 2015 (edited) I know it's a little late now that you've added the 25-pin Dsub, but you could've just kept the stock 15-pin cable and added a female 9-pin D-sub for the Atari 2600/7800. Genesis extension cables are cheap and plentiful. Other than that, this project is awesome sauce! Thanks. Agreed about the possible wiring configuration. I didn't want to have the ability for the final product to be hooked up to two different consoles at once by accident. I also didn't want to lock myself down to fixed pinouts. If I want to, I can build an adapter that, for instance, exposes the keypad matrix lines to the 2600, or makes the quadrature encoded trackball signals directly available to the 5200. Never know what I might want to tinker with. Right now, there are three different adapter configurations that can be put to use on the 2600. I did consider a "hydra" type adapter with the four known useful configurations (including 5200). There are lots of possibilities. But, I know I can make a final decision on the wiring. I know this because I've done it several times already. [Edit]: By the way, despite my earlier claim, there is absolutely no permanent mod made to the controller at this point. I can roll it back to a 100% stock configuration. That was another reason for carrying all 25 pins out on this cable. As inelegant as it is, it kept me from hacking the plastic. Hacking the plastic would have made a cleaner final product, but this method offers "kit" potential. Edited November 23, 2015 by BigO 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 I've got a Sega Sports Pad on order for cheap. It would make an ideal trackball mouse for use with MAME. Hopefully I can source the gray code internally and add a 9-pin Dsub header to the unit in CX-80/ST mode with the second button mapped to pin 9. The Sega wiring will still be present and I may keep the stock cord or wire it to a spare female Dsub for use with the 3 SMS sports titles or Marble Madness. A reverse-bias diode can be placed between pins 5 and 7 on Sega pinout controllers to power the PCB and allow it to work with an Atari in joystick mode. I doubt there's room inside but I would love to place a USB mouse trackball encoder in there to use as a MAME controller. If not, I could enclose the USB trackball encoder inside a separate enclosure and use a 9-pin extension cable to plug in a CX-80/ST style trackball. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted November 24, 2015 Share Posted November 24, 2015 I've got a Sega Sports Pad on order for cheap. It would make an ideal trackball mouse for use with MAME. Hopefully I can source the gray code internally and add a 9-pin Dsub header to the unit in CX-80/ST mode with the second button mapped to pin 9. The Sega wiring will still be present and I may keep the stock cord or wire it to a spare female Dsub for use with the 3 SMS sports titles or Marble Madness. A reverse-bias diode can be placed between pins 5 and 7 on Sega pinout controllers to power the PCB and allow it to work with an Atari in joystick mode. I doubt there's room inside but I would love to place a USB mouse trackball encoder in there to use as a MAME controller. If not, I could enclose the USB trackball encoder inside a separate enclosure and use a 9-pin extension cable to plug in a CX-80/ST style trackball. Remember, there's 2 versions of Marble Madness for the Genesis/MegaDrive that both use the SMS "Sports Pad". There's EA's American version [which was probably an actual port from their earlier Amiga version] which supposedly uses the Sports Pad the best and then there's Tengen's Japanese version which supposedly doesn't use the Sports Pad as well yet is closer to the arcade original since it uses some of the arcade original source code. I guess if you were to mod the Sports Pad further to be 5200-compatible, you'd need either a Y Cable or install a DB9 input so you could connect a 2600 KeyPad controller to it in lieu of the 5200 keypads. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 BigO, you're already busy but if you wanted to, you could probably make a "7800" Trak-Ball controller out of a CX-22. The one advantage to it would be it could use the Trak-Ball mode that's actually included in 7800 Centipede. http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/files/videogames/consoles/7800/7800trakball/7800trakball-blockdiagram.gif http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/files/videogames/consoles/7800/7800trakball/7800trakball-ttl.gif http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/files/videogames/consoles/7800/7800trakball/7800trakball-cx22-patch.gif Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 Remember, there's 2 versions of Marble Madness for the Genesis/MegaDrive that both use the SMS "Sports Pad". There's EA's American version [which was probably an actual port from their earlier Amiga version] which supposedly uses the Sports Pad the best and then there's Tengen's Japanese version which supposedly doesn't use the Sports Pad as well yet is closer to the arcade original since it uses some of the arcade original source code. I guess if you were to mod the Sports Pad further to be 5200-compatible, you'd need either a Y Cable or install a DB9 input so you could connect a 2600 KeyPad controller to it in lieu of the 5200 keypads. I've got a fully loaded Everdrive MD so I can test both no problem. Interesting they are entirely different games. Usually they just port the Japanese version during localization. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 BigO, you're already busy but if you wanted to, you could probably make a "7800" Trak-Ball controller out of a CX-22. The one advantage to it would be it could use the Trak-Ball mode that's actually included in 7800 Centipede. http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/files/videogames/consoles/7800/7800trakball/7800trakball-blockdiagram.gif http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/files/videogames/consoles/7800/7800trakball/7800trakball-ttl.gif http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/files/videogames/consoles/7800/7800trakball/7800trakball-cx22-patch.gif Those schematics look quite complex. Pity this never got released. Could you tell us in layman's terms how the logic on these works? Someone mentioned it sends out cumulative data to cut down on the need for multiple polls during the frame. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 (edited) Those schematics look quite complex. Pity this never got released. Could you tell us in layman's terms how the logic on these works? Someone mentioned it sends out cumulative data to cut down on the need for multiple polls during the frame. I wish I could but I'm not an expert [not even close]. I didn't even think the CX-22 could be modded after-the-fact but then that one schematic is called "patch" so perhaps it's possible. Dan Kramer - the creator of the CX-22 & CX-53 - looked at these schematics for the first time this year and he thought they wouldn't have been cost-effective in the least back in 1984. Seems to have been way over-engineered considering Dan was able to add 2 extra fire buttons to the original design just by using the Paddle Lines which is what him and other engineers did in the Atari Inc Consumer Engineering Lab so they could play their 3-Base Missile Command game on the Atari 8-bit computers. Edited November 25, 2015 by Lynxpro Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 I've got a fully loaded Everdrive MD so I can test both no problem. Interesting they are entirely different games. Usually they just port the Japanese version during localization. I'd imagine Tengen - ahem, Atari Games - didn't have the rights to simply use the EA version and perhaps there was something they didn't like in the EA version compared to the arcade original which would explain the use of their own arcade original source code. Maybe someone should ask Mark Cerny if he knows the answer. Then again, he's pretty busy with the PS4 these days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigO Posted November 25, 2015 Author Share Posted November 25, 2015 I didn't even think the CX-22 could be modded after-the-fact but then that one schematic is called "patch" so perhaps it's possible. That "patch" just eliminates the multiplexer that switches modes. What you end up with is the signals for the two different modes exposed on two different sets of wires instead of being switched back and forth on one set of wires. The flip side of that is that by adding one more of those multiplexer chips, a 3 position switch and tapping the quadrature encoded signals off of the op-amp, you could make a tri-mode trackball. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigO Posted November 25, 2015 Author Share Posted November 25, 2015 BigO, you're already busy but if you wanted to, you could probably make a "7800" Trak-Ball controller out of a CX-22. The one advantage to it would be it could use the Trak-Ball mode that's actually included in 7800 Centipede. http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/files/videogames/consoles/7800/7800trakball/7800trakball-blockdiagram.gif http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/files/videogames/consoles/7800/7800trakball/7800trakball-ttl.gif http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/files/videogames/consoles/7800/7800trakball/7800trakball-cx22-patch.gif Yes, there's a lot going on there. I can see what Kramer meant by this not being cost effective. There's a big black box in the middle (PAL or PLA, depending on which diagram you look at) that makes it difficult to determine the overall functionality just by looking at the drawings. One could probably use the code from the 7800 Centipede to discern how this thing was supposed to behave. From there, it probably wouldn't be impossible to implement the whole thing mainly on a modern microcontroller. If that's true, then a CX-22 could be modified to become a 7800 trackball. The work Thomas and Omegamatrix have done lately tends to indicate to me that an elaborate scheme may not be necessary to put trackball games on the 7800. Though, I know even less about programing the 7800 than I do the 2600 so I could be wrong. Making a CX-22 have two fire buttons that work with the 7800 is electronically trivial. That'd be the more likely thing to happen these days. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 Yes, there's a lot going on there. I can see what Kramer meant by this not being cost effective. There's a big black box in the middle (PAL or PLA, depending on which diagram you look at) that makes it difficult to determine the overall functionality just by looking at the drawings. One could probably use the code from the 7800 Centipede to discern how this thing was supposed to behave. From there, it probably wouldn't be impossible to implement the whole thing mainly on a modern microcontroller. If that's true, then a CX-22 could be modified to become a 7800 trackball. The work Thomas and Omegamatrix have done lately tends to indicate to me that an elaborate scheme may not be necessary to put trackball games on the 7800. Though, I know even less about programing the 7800 than I do the 2600 so I could be wrong. Making a CX-22 have two fire buttons that work with the 7800 is electronically trivial. That'd be the more likely thing to happen these days. Video61 sells a "7800" Trak-Ball which is a modded CX-80 which have the two fire buttons modded to perform independently. It isn't supported at all though by any 7800 games. Kenfused found the code for GCC's "7800 Trak-Ball Controller" in their 7800 Centipede release. He then added his own code to make 7800 Centipede-TB so the CX-22 will work in native Trak-Ball mode. The ROM is in the forums but it hasn't been sold commercially in cartridge form here at AtariAge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigO Posted November 25, 2015 Author Share Posted November 25, 2015 Video61 sells a "7800" Trak-Ball which is a modded CX-80 which have the two fire buttons modded to perform independently. It isn't supported at all though by any 7800 games. Kenfused found the code for GCC's "7800 Trak-Ball Controller" in their 7800 Centipede release. He then added his own code to make 7800 Centipede-TB so the CX-22 will work in native Trak-Ball mode. The ROM is in the forums but it hasn't been sold commercially in cartridge form here at AtariAge. I thought of making two button joysticks until I realized that the devices I was considering had the buttons on opposite sides and you'd have to switch hands to use the other button. Does the Trak-Ball have that same issue? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
78001987 Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 Video61 sells a "7800" Trak-Ball which is a modded CX-80 which have the two fire buttons modded to perform independently. It isn't supported at all though by any 7800 games. Kenfused found the code for GCC's "7800 Trak-Ball Controller" in their 7800 Centipede release. He then added his own code to make 7800 Centipede-TB so the CX-22 will work in native Trak-Ball mode. The ROM is in the forums but it hasn't been sold commercially in cartridge form here at AtariAge. As a specific release no, but Albert will make you one on a "custom" I believe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 I wish I could but I'm not an expert [not even close]. I didn't even think the CX-22 could be modded after-the-fact but then that one schematic is called "patch" so perhaps it's possible. Dan Kramer - the creator of the CX-22 & CX-53 - looked at these schematics for the first time this year and he thought they wouldn't have been cost-effective in the least back in 1984. Seems to have been way over-engineered considering Dan was able to add 2 extra fire buttons to the original design just by using the Paddle Lines which is what him and other engineers did in the Atari Inc Consumer Engineering Lab so they could play their 3-Base Missile Command game on the Atari 8-bit computers. Has this ROM been released? If not it should. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 Video61 sells a "7800" Trak-Ball which is a modded CX-80 which have the two fire buttons modded to perform independently. It isn't supported at all though by any 7800 games. Kenfused found the code for GCC's "7800 Trak-Ball Controller" in their 7800 Centipede release. He then added his own code to make 7800 Centipede-TB so the CX-22 will work in native Trak-Ball mode. The ROM is in the forums but it hasn't been sold commercially in cartridge form here at AtariAge. I thought of making two button joysticks until I realized that the devices I was considering had the buttons on opposite sides and you'd have to switch hands to use the other button. Does the Trak-Ball have that same issue? This. The Sega Sports trackball would likely be a better candidate for modding since you could use the two buttons with one hand and the trackball with the other. I also realized the folley of using a trackball USB mouse for MAME. Most models have the two buttons on opposite sides or a miniature trackball you use with your thumb. Both styles are designed to be operated single handed, but a good MAME controller would have you operating the trackball and hitting the buttons with separate hands. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigO Posted November 30, 2015 Author Share Posted November 30, 2015 Got a little more research/hacking done. I figured out the signals were available for JS emulation, but when I tried it, it was toooooo sloooooow. The time constant on the one-shot is too short. If somebody really, really, really wants a JS emulator for their CX-53, I'll build an adapter for that. It'll take extra circuitry. I was able to surface a double speed clock signal to use with the CX-22 mode trackball function, just in case somebody has an interest in cheating. This could easily have been XOR'ed out of the signals I already had, but it was already there and just cost a bit of wiring. Two pins left unpopulated. Not sure if there's any useful signals left to dig out without adding circuitry. There's already a Left/Right and Up/Down direction on two pins. Not sure what else I can pick out of there. All original 5200 signals are there. With the additional ones, and an external JS emulator adaptor, I should be able to play 2600 Star Raiders on one controller. Need to build that Keypad controller cable to make sure I can do that. But, I've used up all of my surplus Atarilab board 9-pin cables. Also need to figure out if I'm going to be able to make 7800 compatible fire buttons without adding circuitry. So far, all has been done without any permanent modification to the controller. The hardest part to source is the 15 pin cable that will plug into the 5200 console properly. No big deal if I were willing to sacrifice the original cable, but I'm trying to keep the option of restoring the controller back to original if I should ever want to do that. Anybody know of a source for those "earless" 15 pin extension cables? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 Has this ROM been released? If not it should. Not yet. Dan wanted to have it sold commercially for both A8 and the 5200. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 Anybody know of a source for those "earless" 15 pin extension cables? Stock up my friend. Tototek has 15-pin 5200/Famicom/NeoGeo extension cables in stock: http://www.tototek.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=23&products_id=192 Perfect for splicing. These have deep female plug that will reach the recessed pins in 5200/Famicom/NeoGeo sockets. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 Stock up my friend. Tototek has 15-pin 5200/Famicom/NeoGeo extension cables in stock: http://www.tototek.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=23&products_id=192 Perfect for splicing. These have deep female plug that will reach the recessed pins in 5200/Famicom/NeoGeo sockets. Someone alert Albert to this. The lack of such cables with deep plugs is the reason given why the Redemptions ended their production runs. Good job, Stardusk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 My ears are ringing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 My ears are ringing. Your Albert Senses are tingling? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigO Posted December 1, 2015 Author Share Posted December 1, 2015 (edited) Stock up my friend. Tototek has 15-pin 5200/Famicom/NeoGeo extension cables in stock: http://www.tototek.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=23&products_id=192 Perfect for splicing. These have deep female plug that will reach the recessed pins in 5200/Famicom/NeoGeo sockets. Cool. The site only specifically calls out Famicom and NeoGeo. Do NeoGeo/Famicom cables have all 15 conductors populated? Edited December 1, 2015 by BigO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 Cool. The site only specifically calls out Famicom and NeoGeo. Do NeoGeo/Famicom cables have all 15 conductors populated? Yes. All 15 conductors are present. However the logic pinouts for 5200, Famicom and NeoGeo are entirely incompatible, so don't go swapping controllers between consoles... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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