tnt23

This one appears to be targeted at modern gaming applications, SPI makes it particular interesting for DIY stuff.

Can't help but this conversation reminds me of a famous Monthy Pythons 'Argument Clinic' sketch Would you please care to point me to an 'a' article in the title so that I could amend it? English is not my native language so I apologize for any misunderstanding caused by this. I don't see any problems with 'optical sensor' term. It might also include power supplies and all sorts of internal circuitries, from power-on reset to flow control to laser diode thermo management, but it hardly would make sense to name it in full, 'A single chip solution in plastic case with leads that has built-in power, filtering, laser emitter and image registration circuits, purposed for movement tracking in consumer electronic devices, including, but not limited to, personal computers blah blah blah' , unless we are filing a patent which is not the case In most posts and articles related to modding optical mice it is often called 'optical sensor' for the sake of simplicity, and I totally love this name. Let's face the bitter truth: PS/2 mice are obsolete nowadays. But this is great because they can still be used with retro computers requiring quadrature pointing devices And, as opposed to PS/2-Atari converters - at no extra cost!

Users at a1k.org made a (short) list of mice and sensors definitely suitable for the mod (https://www.a1k.org/forum/index.php?threads/43613/page-7#post-1324347) Mice: Logitech M-BJ58 Wheelmouse Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical Hama Maus mit Sensor OM02 Logitech M-BJ69 Dexxa Wireless Optical Mouse IntelliMouse Explorer USB and PS/2 compatible (<v3.0) Sensors: ADNS A2051 ADNS-2030 OM02 (Q2024) H2000 PS/2 almost became obsolete nowadays, so it is possible to get a flock of these dirt cheap or even for free. Worth cracking them open and seeing if they suit. In fact, this is what I did, found the most suspiciously looking mice (tried about 5 or 6 of them), googled for the sensor datasheet and the rest was easy - removed second chip and wired the necessary signals. With all due respect, the title does not carry word 'universal' in it. And it would be impossible to list each and every PS/2 mouse model in topic subject, both due to length restriction and because no particular model was going to be discussed. It is of course entirely possible to update first post with mice/sensors models based on success reports.

Wow, wow, this is getting too serious now I am not going to design another converter, I am not interested in converters (as has been said in the first message BTW). The idea to tap optical sensor directly is nowhere new (seen posts on it going back to 2015), and good news is that it is a) easy with 5V compatible old sensors and b) has been done already for a number of old computer platform where mouse interfaces would accept only X+, X-, Y+, and Y- signals. That and a bunch of button presses. Shame I did not take shots of my Genius PS/2 Intellimouse conversion for Acorn. No microcontrollers, no rocket science whatsoever, just a few traces cut and a few jumpers soldered. Update. Here's how mod from the URL I have posted looks like. Does not look terribly complex, what do you think?

I don't mind pioneering at all Just checking to not re-invent the wheel. On a serious note, a friend's mouse has been deteriorating gradually to the point it is no longer usable, so I guess I'll try to convert something optical for him, and report back.

Really ? Never knew about that benefits ? As others here, I guess ? Well, I am happy to bring you a bit of knowledge you missed :-) Please take a better read. I will quote that for you: "Yes I know there are different converters out there". But I wasn't interested in those solutions, as has also been stated. It was report on successful conversions for Atari that I failed to find on this forum, but once again this can be attributed to my own inability to build search requests properly. Still, if there are links on direct connection of optical sensors' Q outputs to Atari, I'd appreciate these.

Thanks for pointing me to Google, but I am well aware about different PS/2 converters out there, as has been noted in the first message. It seems more fun to adapt old PS/2 mouse (dozens of these are lurking in any geek's dwelling usially) to directly feed optical sensor quadrature outputs to Atari. (Another joy of optical mouse is you no longer have to struggle with dirty ball and roller mechanics, and it is overall lighter)

I know this was done by many retro enthusiasts for different platforms, I did this myself for my Acorn Archimedes 3000. https://www.kernelcrash.com/blog/modifying-a-ps2-optical-mouse-for-an-acorn-riscpc/2016/03/26/ I cannot find anything on converting old optical mice for Atari ST though. Yes I know there are different converters out there, but going straight from (compatible) optical sensor to quadrature output seems more attractive to me. Certainly the original 'tank' mouse has its own charm, but sometimes one might prefer something less bulky and less clanky.

I'll give those card a try with PC to see if there is any difference. Taking a look at PSU is a good idea, as its fan has become quite noisy. Don't have DMA chip replacements so I guess I'll leave it as it is for the time being. As an option I can also try Ultrasatan with my other Atari 1040.

Indeed, it all depends on memory cards used. I've tested 3 different cards with AHPT94.PRG, both with ICD 6.5.5 and PP 1.03 drivers. There was almost no difference between the two in terms of performance, so I wrote down results for PP driver only. 512MB microSD from Nokia 633 K/s Transfer, 0.8 ms Access time using 'Direct HW' mode 635 K/s Transfer, 12.8 ms Access time using 'Logical drive' mode 4GB microSDHC by Smartbuy 189 K/s Transfer, 43 ms Access time both in 'Direct HW' and 'Logical drive' mode 1GB SD by SanDisk 844 K/s Transfer, 1 ms Access time using 'Direct HW' mode 838 K/s Transfer, 12.7 ms Access time using 'Logical drive' mode Of these three cards, SanDisk is the fastest, but also rather unstable. Every now and then it is not recognized on first boot, and bombs me once in a while when running programs from disk.

This particular card is an old Nokia 512M microSD, it was not dramatically fast but showed ~500Kbytes/sec: Another card is modern 4GB microSD from unknown manufacturer, I'll try to set it up with ICD to measure transfer rate. With my previous ICD setup, I had C disk of 15M and then D of 255M. Currently my C disk is 'C16' type 255M, and then there's a bunch of 255M disks from D to N. I believe with PP driver C disk can be up to 255M (TOS 1.02 in my case), could this be the problem?

Hi all, I've finally got my Ultrasatan up and running with my Mega ST4 and TOS 1.02, and decided to go for HDD adapted games. Tried a few with intermittent success, and then discovered that ICD driver is not supported with Gamex. So I have gladly switched to PP driver as it offers DOS&TOS support for big partitions apart from Gamex compatibility. I am also pleased to say that the support from Peter was extremely quick and friendly. Partitioning and formatting the same SD card, and installing PP driver on it was a breeze. My Mega ST4 boots happily and sees new partitions just fine. And it is very convenient to have disk C as big as 255MBytes, seen from my Ubuntu PC without a hitch. I have started filling the disk with software. Brought a few ZIP archives to be unpacked with STZIP, however unpacking took seemingly longer than it was with ICD setup. At some point STZIP crashed with rather peculiar message, which unfortunately I did not care to capture. Thought I'd first copy a good 80M of game archives, which I did, and then the system froze while listing files in disk C. Hmmm. Long story short, I have decided to see just how fast Ultrasatan was. Using AHPT94.PRG utility I have measured both the Hardware and Logical access transfers, which turned out to be ~186 KBytes/s. The access time for Logical drive was around 50ms which I guess is not at all that fast. Any clues as to what could be the reason for low transfer rates? I've tried a smaller SD card, partitioned again as 255M for Disk C of type C16, it did perform roughly the same.

Guess what, that's the very unit I was torturing lately LOL BTW it is CC2019 (Chaos Constructions), not QQ

Connector on a wire is good idea, will consider this for future mods. It's a shame sound cannot be squeezed in S-Video, but then there are SCART connectors.

More pictures taken on PVM monitor: Color smear on vertical lines is a bit annoying. I will take another round of color taming, just need more courage to again dismantle the case and handle those deteriorating ribbon cables. S-Video socket fitted on back of VES case: