geekhack
geekhack Community => Input Devices => Topic started by: bigpook on Tue, 26 May 2009, 20:45:18
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I got it as NIB on ebay. Its opto-mechanical, 4 button with a scrollwheel.
First impressions is that its just another trackball. : ) It feels pretty good, but they all do at first. The biggest negative is the stupid location of the scroll wheel. Its just about useless where its at. So I remapped the bottom right button as an auto-scroll.
(http://ajm.no-ip.info/turboball/img_2552%20(Modified%20in%20GIMP%20Image%20Editor).jpg)
Its kind of big and fat next to the orbit
(http://ajm.no-ip.info/turboball/turboball-003.jpg)
The gray ball on the right is from the expert mouse...
(http://ajm.no-ip.info/turboball/turboball-007.jpg)
In the socket:
(http://ajm.no-ip.info/turboball/turboball-008.jpg)
straight on
(http://ajm.no-ip.info/turboball/turboball-010.jpg)
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It was kind of sticky at first. I think the ball had some coating on it. I didn't wash it off though and it pretty much went away after an hour or so. Its not as smooth as the orbit or expert but it works fine enough.
I had to jack up the acceleration using the xset command and it works fine now.
There are 4 buttons plus the scroll wheel. Linux sees all seven buttons. Not liking the location of the scroll wheel (buttons 2, 4 and 5; where 2 is universal scroll) I went ahead and remapped it to the bottom right button ( which used to be the go back one page button in the browser)
Its got an odd design to it and yes its mostly finger tip driven which so far seems to be how the kensingtons work out for me.
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I don't know if you've been following Lam's travails but this is dumb that Vista just doesn't pick them all up. With any gaming controller it does.
How smart though is xset - with Windows default drivers the trackball and mouse basically use the same settings. As a result I MUST use Setpoint and Mouseworks.
vista sort of has a bad rap when it comes to supporting devices. at least from what I have read. the hype says its all better know in win7.
I use xset to control the acceleration and sensitivity. I use xev to figure out the number of each button. I use a personal xmodmap to rearrange buttons (I have only done this with the turboball) but otherwise the buttons just work when I plug the mouse in.
I don't have a gui where I can select what each button does : (
Having that would be a big convenience but until then its google and the command line.
sometimes with linux you really have to work for it. its not for the feint of heart.
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I have this trackball too. It is really dumb where they put the scroll wheel, but it's fairly nice, it's one of the handful of 5 button trackballs out there. It does wear pretty bad with age since it's a mechanical. Those rubber pads are such a bother.
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I still have it on my desk and its not a bad mouse. While not as smooth as the expert mouse and is still fairly nice. I keep my hands clean as I don't want the the rubber wheels to get dirty. I think that will be a losing battle over time though. But for now its working out ok.
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Pratice
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He wasn't feeling the oneness with the rubber cup.
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Obviously not lol
I typed that at 8am, I'd say that's pretty impressive for still being asleep :P
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Tilde, the arrow keys and curly brackets I'm still learning- I swapped caps<-->ctrl on both my machines to learn the layout before getting an HHKB :)