"... that's actually what the finished product looks like. Mine is for my Atari Mega ST2, and looks identical except for the connector. Very boxy, red, yellow ball, and buttons that look like they could have come from Radio Shack! In fact, until today I was sure my trackball had been modified to add the second button, but this example on your site really is identical."

Doing some searching on the Net, I found several sites making mention of the Wico trackball (with pictures identical to this one) for the TI 99/4, the Atari 2600, Odyssey², and several people are using current models of this trackball to make arcade controllers to run MAME.

Here is information about the trackball presented in this review by Bill Morgan from Apple Assembly Lines, Vol 3, Issue 9, from June 1983 (see the full issue here http://bobsc5.home.comcast.net/aal/1983/aal8306.html):

"The Wico track ball is a cream-colored ball in a black and red box, just about the same size as the TG. There are two buttons in the upper left corner of the top side, convenient to the left thumb. The larger button is about .8" in diameter, the other is about .3" across. This unit uses its own interface card (which is supplied), so it leaves the game port free, but requires a motherboard slot. Wico's ball is based on the same design as the arcade controls: the track ball rolls on ball bearings, and is read by optically counting the revolutions of the rollers supporting the ball. This design gives a much better, smoother feel to the ball's motion, and gives the programmer more flexible ways to read and control the ball. However, it also means that no existing programs can use the Wico ball. $79.95 Wico Corp., 6400 Gross Point Rd., Niles, IL, 60648"

According to the rest of the article, it required some special assembly language programming to make use of the Wico trackball.

Number of page views since 5/16/2003:

Last modified on