Mod MSX Mice to work with Atari & Vice Versa?

[UNIXcoffee928]

I just got a great deal on a vintage Roland S-760 rackmount audio sampler. These plug right into a monitor, and can use a mouse. Trouble is, I didn't get the rare Roland MU-1 mouse with the unit.

 

However, the Roland MU-1 mouse is compatible with the MSX mouse (and nothing else, apparently).

 

Has anyone spent any time hacking a MSX mouse to their Atari, or another mouse to an MSX? I have a bunch of Amiga mice, an 8-bit KoalaPad, and an Atari ST mouse that I can make an adapter for, so this kind of info would be very helpful.

 

I was also thinking that it might be fairly straightforward to do it in software, and use my Newton MP2100 as a tablet, since I know that this has been done as an Amiga mouse replacement, and there is code already out there to do so.

 

Does anybody have any experience with what kind of signals the MSX is expecting on the mouse port, in comparison to the more typical stuff that we're used to?

 

It'll be getting here Monday, so I'd like to have something up & running to use with it once it arrives... any help is appreciated.

 

 

Thanks!

[UNIXcoffee928]

Oh... as I'm looking into it, it's more of a serial device. I wouldn't have bothered posting this, in the first place, but I have no familiarity with the MSX platform, at all.

 

There seem to be a few IC based solutions for this on the web, but nothing that can just be whipped up with a simple rewiring.

 

This little excerpt pretty much describes the extent of the incompatibility:

 

Joystick connector
(Giovanni R. Nunes)

DB 9 pins (male)

 1 2 3 4 5	  1 FWD	I	   5 +5V  
  6 7 8 9	   2 BACK   I	   6 TRG 1  I/O
			 3 LEFT   I	   7 TRG 2  I/O
			 4 RIGHT  I	   8 OUT	O
							  9 GND

If a mouse is connected to a joystick-port, the pins are used as follows:
(Laurens Holst and Giovanni R. Nunes)

1 data b0	(in)
2 data b1	(in)
3 data b2	(in)
4 data b3	(in)
5 +5V		(out)
6 trigger 1  (in)
7 trigger 2  (in)
8 strobe	 (out)
9 ground

The system works as follows:

The MSX Mouse sends 2 signed bytes to the computer, X and Y. This byte must be added to the current X and Y location, so it is a relative movement. So X=0 means X is the same, X=1 means X=+1 and X=255 means X=-1. This is very easy to implement, however it poorly supports mouse speed control, because it's a digital signal. Well, anyways, those 2 bytes are transferred in 4 parts. The computer reads pins 1-4 four times, afterwards signalling the mouse to ready the next 4 bits by complementing pin 8.

[Rybags]

Don't know if this is correct, but pinouts.ru is usually accurate

 

http://pinouts.ru/Inputs/JoystickMsx_pinout.shtml

 

If that's the case, a simple cable adaptor should work. I would also guess that if it's correct, you might well do damage by plugging MSX/Atari gear into the wrong machine without an adaptor.

 

ed - found some more info.

 

http://www.faq.msxnet.org/connector.html (scroll down for Mouse).

 

If that's the case, then I don't think an ST or Amiga mouse will suffice... seems it sends delta values in packs of 4 bits to signify relative X/Y movement.

Edited February 6, 2009 by Rybags

[UNIXcoffee928]

Looks like I had posted right before you on that one.

 

OK, well, the Newton MessagePad as a tablet is looking like a more viable option.

 

http://aminet.net/package/driver/input/mousev1b

 

BUT, the source code is not there, and I seriously doubt that I can contact the author for it, as suggested in the readme:

 

JAN 2, 1995

 

Let's Apple Newton act as a drawing tablet by replacing Serial Mouse.

 

Replaces V 1.0, which had a corrupt file. Mouse V1.0 is a simple utility to

turn your Newton into a drawing tablet.

 

Compatible with 5-Byte serial mouse drivers (mice drivers ?)

 

PC driver and Amiga drivers included

 

Mouse provides a drawing area and three button support, you supply the

Newton, computer and a null modem cable.

 

Source code is available from the author.

 

Anyone, by chance, have this code archived from back in the day?

 

I would guess that the tweaking would be fairly minimal, since the basics needed to put together an MSX mouse serial data format algorithm are listed above.

 

Oh, & That would be the Newtonscript code, not the code for the drivers... since the unit already has a handler that knows what kind of data that it is expecting...

 

I know that this one is a total needle in a haystack request... unless the author, Paul Cimino, is a user here... ha!

[UNIXcoffee928]

Here's what is probably the source for the driver on the Amiga side, if anyone wants to play with it:

http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/aminet/dev/src/SerialClass1_0.lha

 

No such luck for the Newtonscript on the Newton side, though.

[UNIXcoffee928]

Unbelievably, I was able to get in touch with Paul, and he'll be sending me the source code.

 

An interesting side-effect of all of this would be that with an Atari 8-bit serial driver made from a modification to the code, anyone could use a Newton as an Atari tablet with an effectively programmable resolution.

 

This might come in handy as a new Smart Graphics Tablet peripheral for an Atari graphics editor capable of use with the new resolution tricks being talked about lately, since it would be fully programmable.

 

 

Other than that, it should be able to be used, as is as a graphics tablet to an emulator, since it works via a mouse driver... that is, if the driver works, without modification, in a modern environment.

 

If you have a retro setup, then, it should work very easily.