Magic Trackball

I brought my Marconi RB2 trackball from 1985 into the 21st century by converting it to USB. It also got a special lucky trackball.

I had it running as a serial device in the past using an old Genius mouse that was wired to the optical encoders. Sadly that never really worked reliably, I think the serial mouse could not provide enough power to also power the trackball electronics. The removed Genius mouse PCB can be seen on the left side.

Now I upgraded the electronics with an old Logitech PS/2 mouse that runs into an PS/2 to USB converter. Hookup was straightforward after removing the optical receivers in the mouse, I only had to switch the polarity and pullups of the mouse buttons. I had planned to put the USB converter also inside and only expose an USB cable, but the original brown cable is molded in and I did not want to do too much damage, so now it carries PS/2 and the converter is outside.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+VladimirPantelic/posts/URrzMyAPch5