[rescue] Spaceballs.

[Corda Albert J DLVA]

No, the one that I have is older (though it follows that general
form factor.)  Mine was originally intended to connect to one of
the DIN powered serial ports present on the SGI Professional and
Power series VME boxes... it has a DB9 connector on the bac.

 There is virtually no documentation on the pinouts for this
critter on the web, so before I could actually get it to work
on an Indigo2/Irix 6.5, I had to disassemble it and trace out
the power regulator circutry so that I could build
a converter cable which would allow me to insert the required
power into the spaceball. Once it had sufficient power, and
I _finally_ got the pinouts right (again, I had to trace out
the rs232 driver chips and do a little bit of detective/guesswork)
I was finally able to get it to pass the spaceball test in IRIX.
 
At some point, I'll document this on my web page (which is in
dire need of an update and re-hosting (currently Geocities..ecch!)
since all the posts I read on this critter suggested that this
particular trackball wouldn't work under anything newer
than a system running IRIX 5.3 

-al-
-acorda at 1bigred.com



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joshua D Boyd [mailto:jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu]
> Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 6:50 PM
> To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Spaceballs.
> 
> 
> On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 03:37:35PM -0500, Corda Albert J DLVA wrote:
> > I don't know about the newer spaceballs, but I've played
> > a little bit with the (oldest?) SGI spaceball... The large
> > one with the tan contoured base that curves around the ball...
> 
> When you say old (oldest?) SGI Spaceball, did it look like 
> the one in this
> auction: 
> http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1306762691
> except with an SGI instead of an HP logo?  The one in the 
> picture is the one
> I want (well, or the same model.  I don't care if it is that 
> one or another
> identical one, or even an SGI 2003, IBM, Spacetec, etc.  If 
> it looks like that
> and says 2003, I think they are all the same except for the logo).
>  
> > It has a serial interface, and while I was tinkering with it,
> > I set up 2 cu sessions to( and from) the serial port it was 
> connected
> > to, so I could watch/capture the output... I was quite suprised
> > when, on a lark, I sent the ball an ascii "h", and it
> > immediately responded with a "readable" ascii help menu,
> > displaying all the commands it accepts... the menu was short
> > and cryptic, but it was readable! I don't know if the
> > newer balls will do this, but it might be worth trying, and
> > would considerably ease the task of trying to reverse-engineer
> > the spaceball protocol... I imagine the protocol must not
> > have changed that much across models, in order to insure
> > driver compatibility...
> 
> I get the impression that the 4000FLX is quite different, but 
> I can always 
> hope.  The only ones look cooler anyway.
> 
> -- 
> Joshua D. Boyd
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