Old trackball won't work on modern laptops

...

May even be some form of the laptop battery terminal voltage..

Depends how good it is at dealing with control signals and latencies. Just the same problem as trying to do a parallel port programmer from USB to Parallel port converter.

By the sound of things it needs MORE than 6V, could be 7V, 7.5V or 9V as well as 12V.

I would just try to use a bench power supply current limited with the unit stand alone, to determine when the unit starts to give reasonable RS232 levels out. I assume that as the unit is a serailport device working with RS232 ports it is actually trying to drive something like 0 to 9V levels and no -ve voltages.

The problem may also be that 6V is enough but the laptop does not provide any signals sitting at -ve voltage levels and uses 0/6V signalling. Not having a negative signal to create a negative rail may be sufficient to get this to foul up.

If you must do this, use a breakout cable/box on the WORKING system and scope ALL the signals as no doubt some signal may well be sitting at a negative level on working system but not on failing laptop.

Agreed.

Or even work out if he needs a DC/DC of some form to create a negative rail as well as possibly a positive rail.

Yes but they can be such fun these challenges.

Like the simple one I did for SWMBO, who had a solar powered water feature and 12V AC garden lights. Adding small box with relay enabled me to create a pseudo solar panel from the 12V AC feed so water feature worked when the garden lights were on.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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Paul Carpenter
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SWMBO ;-) I sure do miss "RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY". It hasn't been on the tube here in quite a while :-(

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Jim Thompson

snip

snip

not even close to being the same, usb to parallel has to translate from a serialized packet format to a parallel interface and usually involves a MCU or something like that. losing most timing information that might be used in a parallel port porgrammer

an rs232 tranciever is a simple voltage translator, it will add a tniy bit of delay but since rs232 is async and quite slow it will have no impact.

-Lasse

Reply to
langwadt

The secret of happy life, remember to say things at the right time like "yes dear", always with the correct amount of 'sincerity'.....

Then I know my place in the pecking order, I am not hen pecked as I have been told to say.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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Paul Carpenter

ONLY if you need TX and RX data, once modem control signals and turn around times get involved USB to serial does not always work as the control signals do not get translated time wise always correctly. The latencies and the like cause all sorts of problems for serial devices when connected via USB to serial converters. Especially with potential packet latency for a single control line change.

USB is not always as deterministic as most people think it is.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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Paul Carpenter

--snip--

--snip--

If the laptop port is at least going negative (e.g. is using +/-6V vs. +6V/0V), could you use a DS275 power-stealing interface?

Frank McKenney, McKenney Associates Richmond, Virginia / (804) 320-4887 Munged E-mail: frank uscore mckenney ayut minds pring dawt cahm (y'all)

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Frnak McKenney

Joerg ( snipped-for-privacy@removethispacbell.net) wrote at Sunday 21. January

2007 01:33 in comp.arch.embedded:

Just to verify that the trackball works when connected to your PC: Open Hyperterminal, set it up for 1200Baud, 8bit, no hardware handshake. When you move the ball or press a button you should see some char (non printable) arriving. If not, I would suspect, that the hardware port drivers are not able to deliver enough power.

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Reinhardt Behm, Bodenheim, Germany, reinhardt.behm@t-online.de
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Reinardt Behm

But the books are better still. A new one's just come out: Rumpole and the Reign of Terror.

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Robert Latest

Paul Carpenter skrev:

We are talking about two different things, you are talking about a usb to serial converter and yes they change timing.

I was talking about trancievers e.g. max232, wired back to back and _powered_ from USB 5volt to go from rs232 to TTL and back to rs232 levels with a more powerful tranciever

-Lasse

Reply to
langwadt

In a bit of a thread hijack, how good is Wine with odd legacy hardware? I've got an ancient Noral 80188 emulator that needs a proprietory ISA card in the PC and will only run under DOS. Would Wine let me use it on a new PC or do you reckon that it would a be a bit too proprietory for that?

Reply to
Tom Lucas

I don't think even Linux software will add an ISA slot to your motherboard.

Reply to
Paul Burke

Well yes, I shall have to cross the hardware bridge too but assuming that I have an ISA slot then is Wine likely to allow me use it for the emulator? Of course, I am now less certain that I could purchase a motherboard with ISA on it - do they still make them?

Reply to
Tom Lucas

Oh yes, a quick Google has revealed quite a few.

Reply to
Tom Lucas

On a sunny day (Mon, 22 Jan 2007 11:11:48 -0000) it happened "Tom Lucas" wrote in :

There is a third way, no guarantees, and slow, but I installed

formatting link
virtualizer in Linux, started it, and did a full win98 (from original disk) install. (Note you have to remove any other 'real' win98 then, as MS allows only one copy per PC). That worked, also with MS explorer, and could connect to the internet via the gateway. Then I installed DRDOS 7.1 (I think it was 7.1), and it runs too. The CDRom access does not work for me from win98 in the virtualizer, but I am sure that is some config issue, as I installed from it.

So you get Linux, with in a window MSDOS, and in an other window MS Windows.

As to 'wine' in Linux, it has no problem with IO to the only ISA card I have. (But that one only talks via one IO address). To run the virtualizer you need a _d*mn_ fast PC, else it is too slow.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

Sounds interesting, I still have original MS-DOS 6.22 floppies around somewhere so I might even be able to avoid having to do a Win98 install at all. Maybe that would ease some of the speed requirements but the PC I plan to run it on is pretty nippy anyway.

Reply to
Tom Lucas

If you are running a dos program, use linux, and dosemu, which comes with linux. I use it to run all of the old OrCAD tools from linux. dosemu can use MSDOG, or it can use FreeDOS. I use FreeDOS, as it is open source, and works better than the real thing.

-Chuck

Reply to
Chuck Harris

I guess that could work but would an emulated DOS offer all the features that my equipment might require of the OS? I suppose I might just have to suck it and see.

Reply to
Tom Lucas

Yep ;-)

Our 47th Wedding Anniversary is March 31.

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Jim Thompson

[snip]

My thoughts also. Except the track-ball will need its 12V supply.

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Jim Thompson

I cannot answer that. But what I can tell you is it works with a lot of the old DOS shoot-em-up games.

lpt gets redirected to the lp printer spool, the com ports can be accessed directly if you give dosemu permission. You set up your hard drive as a sub directory somewhere, and the a: drive maps to the floppy.

I wouldn't expect it to work with dongles, or other devices that require direct driving of the parallel port.

Try it, it might do what you need.

-Chuck

Reply to
Chuck Harris

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