The Tracking of the Balls
Centipede, Restorations April 18th, 2007OK…first off, let me apologize for the crazy title. I’m trying to make this somewhat interesting, as by itself it isn’t exactly action packed. 
This post does get pretty racey, so children look away. You have been warned.
The mailman has come and gone, and still no memory from China for Moon Patrol. I did, however, receive the new trackball I ordered for Centipede from eBay.
The original one was a Wico.
I wanted to replace it because it was pretty worn out. It worked fine, but didn’t roll smoothly. Kind of like your mom. 
They sell rebuild kits for these, but I figured it would be easier to get a new one for a little more money.
For those of you that are over 18, here’s a pic of the old one from the backside!
I put the new one in, and something wasn’t quite right. If I remember correctly, left and right were OK, but up and down were reversed. I read about this in the forums at klov.com somewhere, and it’s common when changing trackballs of different manufacturers. I ended up having to swap the green and yellow wires in the connector seen in the bottom right corner of the top pic above to get it to work correctly.
It’s working much better…we can centipede now with the best of them. (You may notice that I make new verbs up as I go…hopefully you’ll get used to it)
You can’t see much difference on the top of the control panel, but for those that are bored, here is a before and after:
As you can see, the control panel overlay is pretty worn out. I’ll be replacing that someday and will clean up the bolt heads then. The ball in this new unit is bright white. The original one was off white. I’m contemplating swapping it with one of the correct color, but haven’t decided yet. The ball alone goes for about $5. Incidentally, I’ve heard that the ball is the exact same size as a standard pool ball and a cue ball can be used. I’m heading to the local pool hall now to swipe one…wish me luck.
April 19th, 2007 at 11:43 am
I thought the Centipede trackball was 3″. If it’s the 3″ trackball, a pool ball won’t work (only the 2 1/4″ balls work for that).
I would keep the nice bright white ball, it will discoler with age and become “off white” sooner or later. I really like the happ trackballs, I’ve had nothing but good experiences with them. They seem to be designed very well and are very sturdy (you’ll probably never wear yours out since it’s home use).
April 19th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Hey Mark,
Centipede is definitely 2 1/4″. I like the bright white ball too…still undecided though. The fire button is off white. I may swap it with a regular white one to match if I keep the bright white ball.
Anything going on arcade related with you? Are you selling any bartops yet? They look pretty nice, and I bet you’d do real well on eBay with those.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:34 am
We’re actually still working on our CNC machine. It current “kinda” works. We are waiting on some new power supplies. We are currently using 2 computer power supplies to power the whole thing, and it’s just not enough, especially now that we got new larger motors (we replaced the old 200oz motors with 1200oz motors, and we changed the configuration of the machine to use 2 of those motors on the y-axis).
Basically, it will run right now, but because it can’t get enough power sometimes, it will stall (so it cuts ovals instead of circles etc…). It sucks not being able to rely on the accuracy of the machine.
Once we have the new power supplies, we can hopefully get it up and running again and start some more arcade projects. I’m actually pretty excited to cut some more of those lamp size machines, they are a lot of fun to put together, and it sounds like people on the klov board are pretty interested in them too.
I’m not in any hurry to make more of those bartops. They are pretty fun to make, but they are a pain to ship. We have the dimensions and weight to the point where it’s just under freight shipping from fed-ex (as soon as you go over freight dimensions, you can pretty much tack on $70+ for shipping). But it’s always a hassle to get them to do it, and the last time we shipped them, it came back damaged twice (thankfully it was insured, and we had them pack them so they couldn’t say they weren’t packed properly). We may try to make them into kits in the future and let people assemble them (like the IKEA of arcade cabinets
), but I don’t know. Luckily it’s just a hobby and not my real job.
Speaking of real jobs, did you mention that you are a web designer in the past? I think I remember you saying that. That’s pretty much what I do (my official title is web presence manager at my company).
April 20th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Oh, I almost forgot, we’re also finishing up a custom cocktail cabinet. We have it all cut out (from back when the CNC machine was working better, the current power supplies were good enough for the smaller motors, but we couldn’t cut very fast, with the new setup, we should be able to cut super fast).
I have a few pics of the project on my wifes gallery (http://melarky.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=Coctail-Cab). I really need to update it with some more recent pics though as we’ve got the cabinet stained and varnished (probabbly needs a few more coats of varnish though) and we have the control panels powder coated black (they look great). I just got the joysticks for it in the mail a few days ago (I had run out with my last project), and all that is really left to do is get the top glass cut, find or make some glass clips, wire the controls, and then put it all together…should be realy nice when it’s all done (not sure what we’re going to do with it yet, may sell it to a local guy that showed interest in the past, or stick it on craigslist/ebay, or possibly just keep it, I really like the way it’s turning out. I will most likely sell it though as it has been pretty spendy to make so far, $160 in wood alone, that oak is expensive stuff).
April 20th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Hope you get the CNC working soon. Ready to build kits would be cool, and the shipping would probably be a lot less.
Yeh, people seem very interested in those lamps. They would be very cool, and you would probably get a lot of sales from people on the boards. I would probably buy a couple too.
Here is what I am supposed to be doing during the day:
http://www.squirrelcart.com
I own that site and do all the sales, development, support, etc…
I do more PHP development than straight web design, but I do that as well. If you need shopping cart software let me know.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Hey, that cocktail cabinet looks cool…let me know when you have pics of it done. The control panel for it looks nice…must be cool to work with real tools.
I think it would be cool someday to make a game that never existed in the real world. I’d like to make a Larry the Looter. That’s one of the games they always show on the Simpsons.
April 20th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Hey, I’ve taken a look at Squirrelcart before, funny, I didn’t know that was yours. Did you program it originally? That’s very impressive.
I work for a hosting company, we signed a deal a while back to include Miva on our accounts, but we also offer oscommerce to those that don’t want to pony up the dough for miva (we only give miva to higher end accounts).
I’ll have to look through the site a bit more now that I know who owns it
April 20th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
That is weird. Small world.
Yeh, I did start it originally. Glad you like it. 