Mouse/Joy autoswitcher build-in?

[AndersHP]

Hey

Anyone ever tried Building this mouse/joystick switcher into their Amigas instead of having it outside?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Retro-Joys...item19f23b0e08

Would be so cool to have 3 serial ports on the back

FOR BUYERS OF THIS KIT, CHECK OUT THE HACK LATER DOWN THIS PAGE! WORKS BRILLIANTLY!

[Daedalus]

Should be quite easy on a later A1200 with the shorter motherboard - the mouse connector is on a ribbon cable so can easily be detached and re-routed through a switcher in the spare bay under the floppy.

[Jope]

The Amiga mouse/joy ports are not serial ports. :-)

[Predseda]

I have recently bought this thingie



and the problem is it doesnt work with optical mice via adaptor

[MrFluffy]

I did the same for the lyra and usb mouse adapters on my A2000, I desoldered the ports off the motherboard and soldered pin headers in their place, then used ribbon cables to connect the modules inside the case, and I have two usb exit ports on a blanking plate at the rear of the machine.
I've been thinking about wiring up an internal autoswitcher on the usb mouse line but first I need to fix some other stuff I broke experimenting with something else...

[eXeler0]

Me and a couple of friends built a few ourselves in the early 90's. Unfortunately, the circuits were hand drawn so it was kind of big, although I did optimize the layout to shrink the size later on (but never built it again).
However, it had 3 ports, so you could have 2 joysticks and one mouse connected all the time, and if you clicked on the mouse, it started working, and if you clicked on the joystick it activated it.. Also, we had kind of a pointless feature, you could flip the joystick ports so that player 1 could become player 2 without physically removing the joystick.
Im pretty sure it could be shrunken to fit internally.. Only question would be about the 3rd port..

[AndersHP]

So, I bought the KM Tech board and made space for it under my diskdrive (pretty tight though), and I must say the thing works like a blast, EXCEPT...!

When right clicking my mouse the board constantly (periodically) switch to the joystick... Meaning that in periods, I will have to constantly leftclick to get control back again, and then try right clicking again.

I've reversed the joystick/mouse plugs because I rarely use the second button on the joystick, but with no luck.

I've also tried my old original Amiga mouse, and it's the same.
Has anyone tried this or can see through what might cause it?

[Daedalus]

First off, are you sure it's not touching the underside of the floppy drive? It might be shorting out to that.

It's also possible the adaptor is triggering falsely due to the floating inputs - the adaptor's a simple design, and from looking at the photos, doesn't appear to have any pull-up resistors on the inputs. Logic input will be fine, but the fire button is actually open circuit, and the chips used for the adaptor shouldn't be used that way. Stray noise picked up by the joystick cable or the adaptor itself from other electrical cables or devices nearby can easily cause it to trigger like that.

If that is the case, a simple modification should fix it (a 10K resistor between pin 6 of the joystick connector on the adaptor to +5V, pin 7), but it should already have that.

[AndersHP]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

First off, are you sure it's not touching the underside of the floppy drive? It might be shorting out to that.

It's also possible the adaptor is triggering falsely due to the floating inputs - the adaptor's a simple design, and from looking at the photos, doesn't appear to have any pull-up resistors on the inputs. Logic input will be fine, but the fire button is actually open circuit, and the chips used for the adaptor shouldn't be used that way. Stray noise picked up by the joystick cable or the adaptor itself from other electrical cables or devices nearby can easily cause it to trigger like that.

If that is the case, a simple modification should fix it (a 10K resistor between pin 6 of the joystick connector on the adaptor to +5V, pin 7), but it should already have that.

I placed a teflon washer on top of the board, to assure it's not touching the bottom of the diskdrive.

The other Things you mention is a bit out of my League, is it a 10kOhm resistor, and how do I check the pin numbers? And when you write joystick adapter, is it only on the port intended for joystick use? If it's missing, shouldn't it be soldered onto both mouse and joystick ports?

The seller has asked about joystick type - could it help to buy another joystick? I'm using a Command Control Bat handle, in good condition.

[Daedalus]

You're right, a 10K resistor should be connected on both ports really. The pin numbers are printed in really tiny numbering on the D connectors themselves just beside the pins. Pins 6 and 7 are side-by-side on the bottom row (the row of 4), with 6 at one edge. Just check the pin numbers carefully. This image shows you a close-up where you can see the numbers.

The joystick type shouldn't affect it, though you may find that controllers with internal pull-ups work as intended, such as certain mice, Megadrive pads and some autofire circuits. Most don't have that though, and just leave the fire pin floating (not connected to anything) when the button isn't pressed. It would be pretty poor form for the seller to specify that you can only use controllers with internal pull-ups, especially with so many classic controllers not containing them, and having pull-ups on the adaptor costing just a couple of cent.

[AndersHP]

I'm really impressed with your insight by just looking at a Photo!

I will definately try this out, but are you absolutely sure about the pin numbers, since you mention fire button? It is only when right clicking the mouse it switches to the other port, not pressing fire..?

But the other port is activated by pressing fire, so maybe this is the reason you want to "shield it" (that's how I understand this operation?).

[Daedalus]

Well, I can't be 100% sure there aren't resistors elsewhere on the board (perhaps underneath), but the only resistors on the top side are for running the selection LEDs. The chip used for the toggle function is standard "TTL" logic which is susceptible to noise causing false triggering, and this just feels strongly like that's the issue. I can't think of anything else that would cause it.

Yep, if it's switching to the joystick input, it looks like it's the joystick input that's getting false triggers and so that's the one to fix with a pull-up. It wouldn't do any harm to pull up the 2nd button / right mouse button pin either (it's pin 9), but I don't think that's causing the issue.

There's still an outside chance that there's some sort of intermittent short somewhere - are you sure there's no contact anywhere with anything else, any bent pins underneath the board or any debris between pins anywhere on the board?

[AndersHP]

I will check for resistors on the back when I get my Amiga opened up Again, and I have sent your suggestions to the seller.

Thanks in advance, will try this out. In case I have any resistors laying around, is 10k the only option or could other be used?

[Daedalus]

Cool. 10K is kinda standard for these things, though it's not really critical. Don't go too far from that value anyway, anything from 1k-20k would work but lower values increase the power consumption (four 1k pull-ups is an extra 20mA for example), and higher values might give unpredictable results. So try to get 10k if you can.

[AndersHP]

Allright, will look at it.

Message from seller: "Wiring a resistor as you described with keep the fire button high until it is pressed. I'm not sure this is necessary but give it a try, I don't think it will do any harm."

[Daedalus]

Yes, the fire input is supposed to be high until you press fire, which pulls it down low and which is what the Amiga detects. The Amiga has its own pull-up system but it appears his logic chip doesn't. It all fits with my theory 74 series logic floats high but is very sensitive to noise when it's not pulled up or down, meaning it might work fine on his test bench and with some controllers but not work in other situations. They're not supposed to be left floating like this for that very reason.

Sounds like he might need to update his design...

[AndersHP]

Many many thanks to Daedalus for his insightfulness!

I did this trick with soldering two 10k resistors between the pins 6 and 7 at both ports, as shown here, and it totally did the trick with preventing the switching to go off randomly when right clicking.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/p...2898?icm=false
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/p...1234?icm=false

Just an FYI for others who buy this otherwise quite cool little kit.
I'll let the seller know about this, he should definitely incorporate it into the design.

Thanks again, please let me know whether you can see the photos.

[Daedalus]

Sweet, no problem at all. That's a decent job you did too considering the size of the resistors