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Modding PS/2 optical mouse for Atari?


tnt23

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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.

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Yes, there are diverse converters for Atari, and they convert PS2 compatible signal to Atari ST mouse one. Myself did such. It was with PIC chip and couple resistors, capacitors.  So, just type in google:  atari st ps2 mouse adapter

I don't think that doing it from optical sensor is good idea. That's complex, and is done by chip in mouse self. You will need concrete specs of sensor, then developing firmware for some micro controller what will produce Atari compatible signals. That's just too hard.

Note: even USB mouses use PS2 compatible protocol.

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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)

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20 minutes ago, tnt23 said:

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)

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

Well, FYI: I bought my first one in 2000, and it was expensive, at least 5x more than good 'ball' mouse. But it was worth. The reason for high price was that it was new technology, and it needs much more computing power to sense and convert movements via pure optical way.

"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 ?

Good luck with that feeding ..

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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.

 

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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.

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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.

Even doing trivial thing - making non-Atari floppy drive to serve WP signal good for Atari ST needs search on concrete floppy drive model for some signals. Floppy connector has standard pins, functions, but internal electronic is not standard. And in case of Atari, they made little deviation from regular 34 pin floppy line functions, to save some control lines.  http://atari.8bitchip.info/flomodam.html

 

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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? :)


Screen-Shot-2016-03-26-at-10.12.46-am.pn

Edited by tnt23
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OK. So, that model of mouse has internal accessible those X+- , Y+- signals. Yes, then it is easy thing, and that could be good even for me ?

Assuming that signals are OK for Atari ST family (likely), and if can find such mouse.  I did not seen such solution in my optical mouses, and I opened all them, except last one. Surely it is cheaper with 1 chip instead 2.  And it's easy to see what line of Atari mouse where goes (ohmmeter for instance).

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.

 

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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.

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

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. Again - reducing manufacturing costs.

And last my complain - sorry, but this really becoming frustrating. I learned something - that optical mouses with accessible X, Y signals exist - although, I guess that majority will prefer usual PS2-Atari (Amiga, whatever) converters - no need to open mouse and solder.  And thanks for that. 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 .

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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!

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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/

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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.

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1 hour ago, tnt23 said:

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

Yeah the datasheet has a reference schematic where the sensor goes to a microcontroller that translates the SPI packet into a USB packet.  If the microcontroller instead ran internal counters based on the sensor's reports and then did quad output, that would get you what you need.  At least once you got the sensitivity to a manageable amount.

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  • 1 year later...

I made a new pcb for my ST mouse using the sensor Agilent H2000 from old Genius Netscroll two years ago. Those old chips have quadrature output, the same as our Atari ST. The new mouse is really great.

 

Nová deska v myšce STM1nové víčko

Edited by krupkaj
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  • 1 year later...
On 4/15/2021 at 2:18 AM, krupkaj said:

I made a new pcb for my ST mouse using the sensor Agilent H2000 from old Genius Netscroll two years ago. Those old chips have quadrature output, the same as our Atari ST. The new mouse is really great.

 

Nová deska v myšce STM1 nové víčko

hi,

  would you share your design files for the board and the stl for the ball hole replacement?

 

Ken

 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/15/2021 at 11:18 AM, krupkaj said:

I made a new pcb for my ST mouse using the sensor Agilent H2000 from old Genius Netscroll two years ago. Those old chips have quadrature output, the same as our Atari ST. The new mouse is really great.

 

Nová deska v myšce STM1 nové víčko

piękna mysz

would be possible to have also wireless option?

 

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