Modding PS/2 optical mouse for Atari?

[Modding PS/2 optical mouse for Atari?]

11 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:

The optical mouse chip I was playing with a bit uses an SPI output to tell you what movement it sees, and it seems typical for mice.  It's a bit nicer, though, than a simple "+/-" in any direction, it includes actual movement metrics.  So you'd have to convert movement deltas into quadrature rates to make it work well.  Simply translating "delta x" into an x movement and "delta y" into a y movement is just likely to have your cursor doing mostly diagonals.

 

Anyway, here's the sensor I was playing with:  https://www.tindie.com/products/jkicklighter/pmw3360-motion-sensor/

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

[Modding PS/2 optical mouse for Atari?]

15 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Well, when there is article indefenite as 'a' before something, that means that 'universal' in fact.

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.

 

24 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Other problem is that 'optical sensor' term. It is not just optical sensor, but much more - processing microcontroller, and they are usually made integrated with sensor self.

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.

 

34 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

But PS2 is not obsolete. Maybe connector, oh yeah, my last mouses are with USB, but that does not mean that protocol is not PS2, and as said, PS2-Atari converters work with .

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!

[Modding PS/2 optical mouse for Atari?]

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.

 

22 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

But problem here appeared because unclear explanation and wrong title of that article. It should be Modifying that and that model of PS2 mouse ...

As current title is, it suggest that it is universal solution with PS2 mouses.

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.

[Modding PS/2 optical mouse for Atari?]

1 hour ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

OK, you want it serious:  there are standards, and PS2 mouse protocol is standard. So, you can design converter of it relative easy - of course needs good knowledge. Internal electronic of some optical mouse is not standardized, every manufacturer, mouse model can have different one, and of course you will never see any DOCs about it, nor schematic.  Even if you solve it for particular mouse, it will be not good for most of others. But that's extremely hard, as said in first reply here.

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?

[Modding PS/2 optical mouse for Atari?]

18 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

I don't think that anyone went that 'direct connection' way.  Maybe you try to be pioneer in that ?

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.

[Modding PS/2 optical mouse for Atari?]

15 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

43 minutes ago, tnt23 said:

(Another joy of optical mouse is you no longer have to struggle with dirty ball and roller mechanics, and it is overall lighter)

Really ? Never knew about that benefits 😀  As others here, I guess 😄

Well, I am happy to bring you a bit of knowledge you missed :-)
 

17 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

"as has been noted in the first message" - what I see there is:  "I cannot find anything on converting old optical mice for Atari ST though. "  - WTH ?

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.

 

[Modding PS/2 optical mouse for Atari?]

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)

[Modding PS/2 optical mouse for Atari?]

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.

[Low transfer rate on Mega ST4 with UltraSatan]

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.

[Low transfer rate on Mega ST4 with UltraSatan]

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.

[Low transfer rate on Mega ST4 with UltraSatan]

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?

 

[Low transfer rate on Mega ST4 with UltraSatan]

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.

[the official Channel F thread!]

18 hours ago, e5frog said:

BTW. 

QQ2019 demo, 256 Bytes

 

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=82729

 

Makes you wonder what other little things that could be made, in 256 Bytes... 

 

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

[the official Channel F thread!]

59 minutes ago, e5frog said:

I prefer using a connector on a cable and let it hang a couple of inches from where the antenna cable was - so mod can be reversed if needed. 
If you want to be able to control the volume it needs audio out as well...

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.

[the official Channel F thread!]

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:

[the official Channel F thread!]

@e5frog I have tuned the pots to set 1Vpp on S-Video connector pins, after the THS7314. Without lowering input signals to THS7314 its outputs went to good 2 or 3 volts swing.

Perhaps I should indeed tweak luma down to 0.3Vpp, just left it where the colors on that old LCD telly seemed all right to me

[the official Channel F thread!]

10 hours ago, e5frog said:

@tnt23

Looking good, show us your hookup / schematic. 
Does s-video get rid of the checkered flicker along the side of the graphics? 

The schematic is mostly copied from TI datasheet:

 

On VES, took color signal from C28 to pin 3 of THS7314, and sync from 'VIDEO SHT 1' point to pin 2 of THS7314 via 4K7 pots (not shown). Used those pots to set the voltage swing of signals on S-Video connector to ~1Vpp.

 

Did not register any checkered flicker, but that's probably because I was more obsessed with color ghosting. Will post more closeups.

[the official Channel F thread!]

On 8/8/2019 at 11:51 AM, e5frog said:

I succeeded in composite modding my Luxor VES

Inspired by your progress, I took a closer look at my own mess of wires and immediately discovered that output 75R resistors on the proto board did not work, being short circuited by unfortunate track pattern on the board's bottom. I have no idea why I did not pay attention when I was soldering these. As the result, luma was working without proper line termination more or less okay, but chroma has been distorted savagely.

 

Now everything looks much better. I fitted S-Video socket on the rear part of VES case. Here's the picture on an old LCD TV with a lousy S-Video cable, hence the ghosting.

 

[the official Channel F thread!]

On 8/5/2019 at 4:07 PM, ubersaurus said:

Also, has anyone ever tried a TSR 1-2450 as a replacement for a 7805 in a channel f? Curious if that's a viable drop-in replacement.

Nice and small one. Alas, according to the datasheet its maximum current is 1A, three times less than that of original LM7803 in TO-3 casing.

[the official Channel F thread!]

Lost my +5V rail again, don't know was it due to short circuit or overload. Not wanting to fiddle with another L7805 in TO-3 case (which are of limited availability locally, and rather pricey), decided to go for DCDC regulator instead.

Got a 5V/3A assembled kit for about $3.

 

That one came on aluminium PCB to be conveniently installed on heatsinks. Fits pretty well with some wires:

 

 

And stays cool after 40 minutes work, worth the hassle.

[the official Channel F thread!]

On 7/31/2019 at 10:05 AM, tnt23 said:

bit of tech whinning on THS7316 inside

Could've saved me some efforts if only I haven't overlooked a THS7314, same as THS7316 but for SDTV (with 8MHz filters) LOL!

[the official Channel F thread!]

1 hour ago, e5frog said:

Yes, it worked very well on the Channel F II, but not on the Luxor V.E.S. Just got a B/W and rolling image there. Will try bypassing chroma and add it in after. 

Schematics for Luxor differ in couple of moments, firstly Luxor appears to be PAL version and features dedicated delay line, and secondly, they have omitted LS07 gates after 74153 mux for CHROMA and BURST signals.

Luxor also swapped another LS07 gate in Sync circuit for open collector BJT, but this really should not matter.

[the official Channel F thread!]

On 7/19/2019 at 7:19 PM, e5frog said:

First soldered version. 
Had to buy a couple of other components than planned due to not selecting a large and expensive company... 
So 4.7µF instead of 1µF on the video input (not sure about that one), 22µF on the audio (which is fine but it barely fit the footprint), sandwich of two 150 Ohm resistors (parallel) instead of a 75 Ohm and I used a potentiometer I already had.

Did you get a chance to try it? I've built this circuit to try something different while still getting frustrating results with THS7316 amplifier. It did not get me any better results though.

I will be trying a couple of other ideas, one is to make a copy of delay circuit that shifts 3.58MHz carrier phase for Green and Red:

Just to check if everything is fine on this path.

 

Warning: bit of tech whinning on THS7316 inside!
 

Spoiler

By the way, THS7316 seems to be great for modding most retro stuff out there, provided the original signals are of decent quality. It could well be that my particular Channel F is rather noisy especially on chroma, and THS7316 is an HDTV video amp. Looking at its specs, there's 6dB gain (great) and ability to drive 75-Ohm loads (cool), and it also has more than 30MHz bandwidth. Excellent for HDTV, but a bit too much for good old SDTV with its bandwidth of under 6.5MHz I believe. THS7316 also has a nice "5-th order 36-MHz (–3 dB) Butterworth Filter" which once again is great for HDTV and fast DAC sampling clocks:

 

 

In Channel F, color signal is not pure sine wave, but rather a 2-level something mixed of two phase-shifted digital signals (I still don't get the idea but obviously engineers from the past did that for reason). One would expect a bunch of 3.58MHz harmonics to be present in output signal spectre, like 7MHz, 10MHz etc, as well as all sorts of additive or subtractive or whatnot frequencies. These most likely shall be filtered out, and I believe HDTV amps are just useless here.

 

I have then googled a bit for SDTV and NTSC and filtering, and got some quick reading on 'reconstruction filters'. Then I have found this little gem, NCS2553. Said to be "a 3−channel high speed video amplifier with 6th order butterworth standard definition reconstruction filter", it seems to be a better fit for TV outputs modding:

 

 

Looks like it should do a great job of filtering out anything over 6MHz. I have ordered a handful of these (4GBP for 10pcs at RS Components), and will give them a try.

 

 

And as an absolute last resort, I will try making RGB output by means of 256x4 EPROM (82s126 or similar) and a bunch of emitter followers. EPROM is there to translate BG0, BG1, FG0, FG1 signals directly to RGB and (I)ntensity to make light hues of Green and Blue and Grey.

[the official Channel F thread!]

10 hours ago, e5frog said:

A friend has a similar problem with hot bridge and rectifier. He has swapped diodes and rectifier without success. Must be a short somewhere...

Could be, still would replace the bridge as it was getting too hot. I've found compatible BR310 replacement, 3A continuous, will give it a go.

10 hours ago, e5frog said:

Caps can short, little brown disc type as well, even if it's unusual.

This is what I'm really tempted to do, as +5V was rather messy on the scope. Besides, those brown disc capacitors are used here and there in video generating circuitry, so worth checking, too.

[the official Channel F thread!]

On 7/25/2019 at 8:25 PM, e5frog said:

S-video would be the best, if you don't have s-video input it's easy to get composite with an adapter or make one yourself with a small capacitor. 

Problem is, I cannot get decent composite in the first place. Splitting to Chroma and Luma did not help much.

 

On 7/25/2019 at 8:25 PM, e5frog said:

BTW have you found any errors in the schematic, sometimes changes are made and schematics not updated.

No I haven't. so far everything I've been checking did comply with the schematic.

 

By the way, the +5V bridge rectifier was getting rather hot, and at some point +5V had just gone. I have desoldered both the bridge and the 7805 for replacement.