Ran some experiments on 5200 with adapters to see if I could get a mouse wo

[Swami]

Yes- analog gets through the Emulator Smartjoy PS2 to PC adapter. The Speedlink Redeemer adapter also sends through analog signals, but the mice & trackballs I used with both these adapters are over 400 dpi and the 5200 game action onscreen is moving pretty fast with very little displacement in the controller. It is analog, but the sensitivity is quite high... and then there's the recentering issue when you stop moving the mouse/trackball which is the Speedlink Redeemer's fault.

 

Your idea about the 2600dapter 2 and the 8 bit era trackballs/mice (41 to 82 dpi) is intriguing. I'd have to take the USB plug of the 2600dapter 2 and put one of the USB-to-PS/2 adapters on it and there's no guarantee that's going to work... but it might. hmmmm....

I'm curious, too. It is a bit unfortunate that all optical mice are at least 400dpi, which seems funny to say. I've never was the biggest fan of the old mouse mat style ball mice in the 80's and 90's.

[Swami]

Unfortunately, the only way to get the NES or Genesis controllers hooked up to the 5200 involves the Masterplay Clone which would be sending digital signals out, not analog.

 

If the Genesis Mega Mouse works in a way that is digital then it could work, but that's a longshot. I will look into it.

Sent you a question by PM.

[Swami]

Yes- analog gets through the Emulator Smartjoy PS2 to PC adapter. The Speedlink Redeemer adapter also sends through analog signals, but the mice & trackballs I used with both these adapters are over 400 dpi and the 5200 game action onscreen is moving pretty fast with very little displacement in the controller. It is analog, but the sensitivity is quite high... and then there's the recentering issue when you stop moving the mouse/trackball which is the Speedlink Redeemer's fault.

 

Your idea about the 2600dapter 2 and the 8 bit era trackballs/mice (41 to 82 dpi) is intriguing. I'd have to take the USB plug of the 2600dapter 2 and put one of the USB-to-PS/2 adapters on it and there's no guarantee that's going to work... but it might. hmmmm....

Latest news is that I can use the Willingham adapter and the Redeemer to use an optical mouse on a Colecovision. Since the Colecovision has no DC current source, I was up a creek, but since you can power the whole deal with a usb hub plugged into the Redeemer it worked. Well, I can only use one button since I have no way to wire the 5 to 6 pin second button which is currently pin 9 to 8 without interfering with the other 6 to 8 pin button or the joystick (pin 1,2,3,4) to pin 8. Maybe adding a resistor in there like on the 7800 would work to attach pin 5 to pin 8.

 

Also, Im going to try using an old PS/2 gamepad on the Colecovision.

[Swami]

Swami- thanks for the info. I am probably not spending higher than $20 for an old mouse/trackball, so that rules out the ones made by CH Products and the Best Electronics PC trackball...

 

I did buy a $1 3-button serial mouse at a second hand store yesterday and plugged it into the serial to PS/2 adapter to try it. Got no response, so I'm left thinking that those PS/2 adapters only work with mice that have been preprogrammed for compatibility with adapters like that. I have found one that may work with a PS/2 adapter on Ebay that may be under 200 dpi but I'm not sure... Will have to look into this a bit further.

 

Regarding the Commodore mouse in joystick mode being used with the Masterplay Clone, I'm pretty sure it's going to work because I used my 2600 Trakball with the M.C. and it worked on digital control games. Not Star Wars Arcade or Missile Command... In my 5th episode of Wired-Up Retro I played a few digital games with the 2600 Trakball as well as the Master System Sega Sports Pad with good results.

 

I tried the 2600dapter ][ with my Atari ST trackball on my new 5200 with the innovation and speedlink adapter with USB power source. Everything powered up, but in games like Star Wars Arcade I could only get the mouse to twitch a bit.

 

With the CH Products DT225 set in 1/4 resolution mode, which is somewhere between 45 and 180 dpi, since they don't say anywhere on the trackball what the model number is (there are 180, 360 and 720 dpi normal resolution models), I was able to get it to work really well, although it self-centers the cross-hairs on the screen every time you stop the trackball, so that takes some getting used to. This was true when using the types of trackballs from your video as well, except, as you noticed, the cursor moved about 2-4 times as fast with those.

 

I have a very old IBM PS/2 trackball that looks like those first PS/2 mice (with the two large rectangular buttons), but it also just twitches. I think it may do this because it does not have the PS/2 protocol built in, but the SpeedLink does not even recognize the Belkin PS/2 adapter. Any idea how to add the PS/2 protocol to the pre-internal models? I don't think there was any other application for this type of adapter, so probably not. Too, bad. It would be nice to try out this earliest IBM PS/2 trackball with the 5200.

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Belkin-USB-PS-2-Adapter/dp/B000ELSXFY

[Swami]

Well, I managed to make a new controller discovery on the 5200 with adapters so check it out:

 

It's not the ideal controller in most games, but it performs nicely in River Raid and Beamrider.... Will be checking things out on 5200 Tempest soon.

 

I think I finally figured out the trackball/mouse re-centering issue with Star Wars Arcade. Based on experience with Pole Position, it re-centers because there is no trackball mode for SWA. If SWA had a trackball mode, it would not re-center with mouse or trackball. With mouse or trackball as a controller in games in non-trackball mode, it sees stopping the mouse or trackball as centered joystick. I guess, we would need a trackball hack of SWA to fix this. Of course, the standard controller, analog PC sticks and PC flight yokes will still work well, as well as PS2 analog thumbsticks, if you have the adapter..