This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
To: svlug@svlug.org Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2000 14:41:43 -0800 From: J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu> Subject: [svlug] Kensington TurboRing USB trackball, GPM, and a 2.2.18 kernel. Simply, it works as a USB device just fine using a 2.2.18 kernel. I haven't tried other kernel versions yet. Comments on the device: For pictures etc see: http://www.kensington.com/products/pro_mic_d1300.html Its a fairly typical asymetic 3 button trackball with a large ball and a scroll-wheel-like "turboring" surrounding the trackball. ObNote: I'm not fond of scrollwheels in the first place, but the grainy cheap plastic feel of the turboring is particularly unpleasant. The trackball has the typical unpleasantly slippery feel of optical trackballs. The ball is quite light and the rolling friction is high enough that it can't be "spun" to a location (spin the ball rapidly in a direction and then "catch" it when the pointer gets to the right place). There's also a problem with the trackball periodically not reporting horizontal motion (causing the pointer to seem to "stick"). I suspect thsi is a defect in this particular trackball hwoever, and not typical of the product.line. After that configuring the device under a 2.2.18 kernel and XFree86 v4.0.1 (Debian) as per the guide at: http://www.linux-usb.org/USB-guide/book1.html worked fine, tho I made a slight modification in that I first set up GPM (IMPS2 device pointed at /dev/input/mice), and then setup libsvga and XFree86 pointed at the GPM repeater. Setting up various X apps as per http://www-sop.inria.fr/koala/colas/mouse-wheel-scroll/ Also worked well (tho I haven't tried XEmacs yet). Controlling the direction of the turboring (which was was "up") is just a matter of reversing the button assignments in XF86Config-4 among the following two lines. Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" Option "ZAxisMapping" "5 4" Summary: Its being returned this afternoon and I'm happily returning to my 6 button Mouse-Trak Evolution: http://www.mousetrak.com/evolutio.htm ===