exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

stephen_usher wrote: 26 May 2022 13:29 I've looked on-line for the 20mm mouse balls that the Mk.II mouse uses and couldn't find anything I'm afraid.

I'm minded of our very own @GadgetUK164's video:



BW

mrbombermillzy wrote: 26 May 2022 13:42 I wonder if mark at Retro Clinic has any balls for an Archie mouse?

Where would someone buy a spare mouse ball from, these days??!?

If @stephen_usher says they are 20mm, I will attempt to find a suitable donor from somewhere if you dont have any joy in the meantime.

Cheers, I will see what I can find too in the meantime, but Apple mice and Atari mice are a no, as is the generic non-Atari Atari mouse connected to my MSTE!

I have another mouse, serial, but can't find it right now. Will keep looking. Other than that it's steel balls or gobstoppers!!

Badwolf wrote: 26 May 2022 13:43

stephen_usher wrote: 26 May 2022 13:29 I've looked on-line for the 20mm mouse balls that the Mk.II mouse uses and couldn't find anything I'm afraid.

I'm minded of our very own @GadgetUK164's video:



BW

Nice, thanks, will watch that later for sure.

Badwolf wrote: 26 May 2022 13:43 I'm minded of our very own @GadgetUK164's video:
BW

Just watched the vid and one of those mice balls look similarly opaque glazed like a gobstopper too. I wonder how they get like this?

As for the steel ball...wow, I bet thats very torquey. You might not be able to stop the thing once youve got it travelling! :lol:

mrbombermillzy wrote: 26 May 2022 13:59 Just watched the vid and one of those mice balls look similarly opaque glazed like a gobstopper too. I wonder how they get like this?

Yeah. I'm guessing Acorn blew the budget on the keyboard so decided to make the mouse balls out of some old tubes of Araldite they found in the workshop!

BW

Badwolf wrote: 26 May 2022 14:02

mrbombermillzy wrote: 26 May 2022 13:59 Just watched the vid and one of those mice balls look similarly opaque glazed like a gobstopper too. I wonder how they get like this?

Yeah. I'm guessing Acorn blew the budget on the keyboard so decided to make the mouse balls out of some old tubes of Araldite they found in the workshop!

BW

:lol: Its pretty poor, at any rate.

Who would have thought that Atari, with all of Jack Tramiels penny pinching, would have superior mice balls and battery backup/RTC based solutions to many others (e.g.Acorn/Apple/C=)?? :)

Well, just to take a punt and see what happens I found a 20mm ball bearing and a 20mm Delrin (Hard plastic) ball on ebay, about £10 for both, so they've been ordered, lets see what happens.

I think the mouse balls are the same size as the Mk.I Apple ADB bus mouse.

Apparently the mice were made by Logitech (even the original ones), so blame them for the self destructing gobstoppers! :-)

Is it a 20mm mouse ball?

Trying to get hform onto floppy is proving troublesome, so I suspect there may be FDD issues too, I'd better make sure that all the tracks to the FDD socket are intact.

Pretty sure it isn't the drive itself, since I swapped for another drive and it's the same. I'm impressed by how many formats it offers, including some single sided options, ADFS, DOS and Atari out of the box.

I've ordered some spare 7406Ds too as that can fail apparently (It's a hex inverter).

Next up is to confirm the lines to the FDD socket. At least half are either NC or to GND, so it shouldn't take too long.