It's a quick and easy project compared to most I have on the to-do list, so it's something I can fit into a few hours one evening. But the first priority is to get my 800 put back together. It's been a few months since I took it apart again to install the dual-PIA board, and I was installing a replacement Sophia 2 at the same time, but then had misfortune of bricking my Pokeymax somehow in the process. And though I happen to just get a Pokeymax V3 around that time, I decided to install it in the 800, since the 1200XL it was meant for isn't operational atm either. But the Pokeymax V3 isn't just a plug-in replacement for the V2, it has additional wires that have to be connected to the motherboard and CPU board.
But that was about the time when work started getting hectic and busy and I had my business equipment to work on and repair too. But maybe I can get the 800 back together this week though as I have a bit of unforeseen time off due to the lack of rain for about a month. Which we just got a down-poor over the weekend and more scheduled later in the week, but my customer's lawns still need time to recover and grow again now that they got rain.
So I doubt I'm going to bother with the mouse anyway, until I get the 800 running again. really, it would be stupid to do it now since I can't test it right away before I put the mouse back together, or I may be taking it apart and redoing the hack if I hook things up wrong. One main thing is making sure the mouse's pot lines match up with the Atari Touch tablet as to which pots are controlling X and Y coordinates or things could end up backwards.
You'd think this would be a no-brainer, but there was no standard between computer brands as to which pots (assuming a POT0 and POT1 or 1 and 2 depending on how they chose to number them) controlled X or Y movement. In fact, even on the Atari the Atari touch tablet is the opposite of the Koala Pad and the Super Sketch drawing board. So you can't use one tablet with the other's software unless you splice and cross the pot lines at minimum, which I think is all that is different between the Atari touch tablet and the Super Sketch pad. But the Koala vs Atari is different.
There could also be an issue with the software too, in whether the programmers decided the 0 "starting" position should be for each pot and if moving to the right is counting up from 0 or down from, IIRC on the Atari, 255, and the same with the other direction.which is actually the problem with the Atari tablet vs Koala, as the X direction and Y use the same pots, but the program's Y movement position count is opposite on the Koala and Koala Paint than it is for the Atari Touch tablet and Atari Artist.
So I need to test the mouse with the 800 for which pots go to which pot line as well as if Atari Artist's cursor will move up the screen when I push the mouse forward, or if it will move the cursor down and the same thing with the other direction. I might be able to fix this problem on the pots in the mouse, if they exist, by swapping wires on the pot itself so that the pot reads opposite input possibly, but that may not work. But the chance is good that if the mouse isn't compatible with programs that use the Atari Touch tablet, that it is compatible with ones that use the Koala pad. And some, like Rambrandt, let you choose either tablet. Then I'll just use the programs made for either-or and the ones that work for both.
