Anyone used an Atari Touch Tablet as PC tablet?

[Noelio]

I just received a brand new one today from B & C... While mainly for my collection I got to thinking...

 

It looks prettier than my Wacom tablet and its got Atari wrote on it. I need to get one working on the pc.

 

Any thoughts or has anyone done it?

[Urchlay]

A couple of thoughts...

 

The resolution (sensitivity) on the Atari tablet might be too low to be useful for a modern PC. Unlike a mouse, tablets report an absolute position, which is then divided by the screen resolution. If you're using a 1280x1024 display, the tablet needs to be able to detect at least 1280 distinct horizontal postions and 1024 vertical. The Atari tablet acts as a paddle, which on the Atari only has a resolution of 228 positions on each axis, due to the way the Atari paddle-decoding hardware works. So... the Atari tablet might or might not be sensitive enough to work as a PC tablet. It wouldn't have to be that sensitive, since it only was designed to work with the Atari paddle circuit, but it might happen to be anyway. You might also experience lots of jitter (though that could be corrected in software).

 

If you had a way to hook it up, you could just try it & see. If you've got a PC with an old-style game port, it wouldn't be hard to wire up an adaptor that connects the left and right paddle lines to the gameport's analog joystick X and Y axis inputs... but then you've got a PC joystick device, not a mouse. Your OS might support using an analog joystick as a mouse, though. Linux can do it, not sure about Mac, I've seen it done on Windows but don't know if it took a special driver or just what came with the OS. BTW, if you don't have a gameport, you can get a gameport-to-USB adaptor. Radio Shack used to sell them, probably still does. I have one I bought 4-5 years ago and it works pretty well for things like flight sticks and the Gravis Gamepad Pro (though it only supports 2 of the buttons, not a problem for the Atari touch tablet).

 

If you could find a modern tablet that's about the same size & shape as the Atari one, you could replace the Atari tablet's innards, which would be guaranteed to work... but then it won't work on an Atari, of course.

 

If you were just wanting to use the tablet with an Atari emulator, you could use a Stelladaptor. Easy, no special hardware or software needed, but it'd only have 228x228 resolution, not useful for general-purpose PC mouse use.

[Tempest]

I just received a brand new one today from B & C... While mainly for my collection I got to thinking...

 

It looks prettier than my Wacom tablet and its got Atari wrote on it. I need to get one working on the pc.

 

Any thoughts or has anyone done it?

 

I thought the ST Touch Tablet was prototype only?

 

http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/stpad.html

 

Tempest

[Atari-Jess]

I thought the ST Touch Tablet was prototype only?

 

http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/stpad.html

 

Tempest

 

He's referring to this:

 

 

the 8bit tablet CX-77

Edited December 10, 2007 by Atari-Jess

[Noelio]

Yep thats the one... CX-77

I got it new in the box from B & C along with a trakball, 1064 memory upgrade for a 600 and a couple calculators.

Today felt like christmas opening sealed atari boxes!

 

Gorgeous looking devices indeed. I guess if all else fails I could find a broken one and transfer innards as stated above.

 

Atari really did a fantastic job of aesthetic design on the XL lineup of pcs and accessories.

Pity!

 

I thought the ST Touch Tablet was prototype only?

 

http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/stpad.html

 

Tempest

 

He's referring to this:

 

 

the 8bit tablet CX-77