Standalone Trackpoint

[Hak Foo]

I liked my old Pentium II Thinkpad with trackpoint, but franklly, I use desktops.

I'd love to be able to add a trackpoint that snapped on the side or bottom of a standard board (I'm not drilling into anything I have).

It seems like the closest you can find are POS boards with a trackpoint-alike built in (super-expensive, and not really necessarily connected to a board you'd want), the Endurapro (pretty expensive, sucky trackpoint apparently), or trying to cut apart a Thinkpad board.

I can't believe these are the best options.  Surely, back when they made snap-on trackballs (I loved the one from my Toshiba 486-40), someone tried to clone the trackpoint.

I've concluded I need to re-photoshop my image too.  My dream board is the top programmable rows of a G80-8113, the bottom rows of a standard 104 (G80-3000, Customizer 104, etc), Alps White switches, and a trackpoint.

[Izza]

The main problem, I think, is that there's really no 'standard' board, in terms of case profile.

So, what you'd end up with is something that could be really slick, but instead ends up being a clunky, ergonomics, nightmare, due to an overcomplicated mounting mechanism that has to fit a wide range of boards.

The boards you might see something like this for would be POS/kiosk boards, and the like... as there's more demand for that kind of thing. Most users, I believe, have failed to adopt the Trackpoint in the same way they failed to adopt the trackball.

If you were to attempt building one yourself, I'd suggest trying one of the old Scrollpoint ball mice, and using it for parts.

[.XL]

Or, if you like buckling springs, you could just buy the premade keyboard+trackpoint from Unicomp...

[The Solutor]

I liked my old Pentium II Thinkpad with trackpoint, but franklly, I use desktops.

I'd love to be able to add a trackpoint that snapped on the side or bottom of a standard board (I'm not drilling into anything I have).

It seems like the closest you can find are POS boards with a trackpoint-alike built in (super-expensive, and not really necessarily connected to a board you'd want), the Endurapro (pretty expensive, sucky trackpoint apparently), or trying to cut apart a Thinkpad board.

I can't believe these are the best options.  Surely, back when they made snap-on trackballs (I loved the one from my Toshiba 486-40), someone tried to clone the trackpoint.

I've concluded I need to re-photoshop my image too.  My dream board is the top programmable rows of a G80-8113, the bottom rows of a standard 104 (G80-3000, Customizer 104, etc), Alps White switches, and a trackpoint.

I have a spare thinkpad keyboard, if you want, or you can find one of them for few bucks on ebay.

Afaik the trackpoint from the enduras is way different than the one from thinkpads.

There's also the ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint from lenovo,

 and one very similar with the thenkeys IBM branded

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823218001
(very expensive)

More infos here

[hasu]

Like this?

http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?8971-Looking-for-Trackpoint-controller-IC-pinout&p=162216&viewfull=1#post162216

[Input Nirvana]

I somehow missed this thread and the thread you linked when you made the standalone TP. Very cool and very functional. The diagram is king, thank you for that.