From tweeks@texas.net Received: from texas.net (dnet02-09.sat.texas.net [206.127.4.39]) by mail1.texas.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id AAA09312; Tue, 11 Nov 1997 00:28:35 -0600 (CST) From: Thomas Weeks To: Dan Ritter CC: Thomas Weeks Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 00:36:25 +0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <346571E1.A7AA20C5@sprint.ca> X-Mailer: YAM 1.3.4 [020] - Amiga Mailer by Marcel Beck Subject: Re: Hack idea MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-UIDL: 6e0e82190dcbbfd7dfb665a1df3f307f Around 09-Nov-97, Dan Ritter typed: >I just wanted to get your opinion on a hack idea I had. I was looking >at a hack to make a standard IBM serial mouse into an Amiga mouse. The >hack said that both are the same until the IBM serial mouse changes to >voltage levels to be rs232. Not quite.... First... the IBM mouse converts the separate horzontal, verticle, and button signals and converts them from a parallel stream of data, to a formatted serial BYTE based data structure... THEN it converts that data structure into RS-232 serial data stream... in a matter of speaking... [NOTE: I HAVE heard of a hack that bypasses the RS-232 BYTE level formatting chip all together. I guessit would work by channelling the TTL level output of the IR LED H&V wheels DIRECTLY into the Amy's H&V lines as well as the buttons. This would effectively bypass the RS-232 chip and MAY work if you cleaned up the signals a little or buffered them. But I have never performed any such hacks. I prefer to just make a bus mouse adaptor and get a nice bus mouse.] > My idea was to build an in between circuit >that is powered by the amiga to change those voltage levels without >having to hack the mouse itself. I was going to do this myself... it would take a small microcontroller to take the incoming serial data stream and convert it on the fly to paralell control lines that the amiga can understand. But it has already been done and you can buy one for around $50... well... if you're a masochist, I guess you COULD do it all with descrete logic.. but that would be HELL.. not to mention expensive! [NOTE: _elab does have a NICE serial<->Parallel converison chip for this type of project.. sounds cool. http://www.netins.net/showcase/elab ] > There is a chip out there called a >max232 that will do this. No.. all that chip does is provide TTL/RS-232 conversion with a single 5V supply. Nothing more... >a 1489 chip and a diode. Does this sound like it might possibly work. >Or do you know? Like I said.. I was going to do this.. and it would take a microcontroller... not just a MAX232 chip... If voltage levels were the only problem... then yes... but that is not the case. >Anyway if you have an opinion to give e-mail me. Thanks 8-) There it is... sorry... but the good news is you can either go ahead and design one if you are good with hardware design, or just buy one for around $50.. I remmeber the device was shown a few months ago in Amazing... Good luck! Tom D Tek -- __________________________________________________________________________ / Thomas W. Weeks |Team AMIGA Commodore Amiga 500/030 40MHz \ | A&M EET/Telecom Grad '95 | /// Hacked Into Black Tower Case, | | Authorized Amiga Tech (7yrs) | __ /// 9M RAM, SyQuest 44M, 700M-o-SCSI | | Contact Me @ | \\\/// IBM 286 Hardware Emulator, | | o------------o | \XX/ Home Brew Audio A/D, HP48GX | | Email: tweeks@texas.net |"Amiga, The Computer for the Creative Mind"TM| |Web:lonestar.texas.net/~tweeks|"Mac, The Computer for the Rest of Us"TM | \_____________________________|____________________________________________/