[GanjaTron]

Hi,

does anyone have a cabling schema for hooking up a SpaceBall 1003 (the first!) to a powered 8-pin DIN serial port? I whipped up a cable based on the pinouts in the HDH and at spacemice.org, and the SB powers up (beep-beep), but it's not initialised by SW that supports it.

I've been buggering around with an RS232 breakout box (very handy), trying combinations of handshakes (CTS, RTS and DTR), but to no avail.

Any ideas?

--Roland

[weblacky]

Hi,

does anyone have a cabling schema for hooking up a SpaceBall 1003 (the first!) to a powered 8-pin DIN serial port? I whipped up a cable based on the pinouts in the HDH and at spacemice.org, and the SB powers up (beep-beep), but it's not initialised by SW that supports it.

I've been buggering around with an RS232 breakout box (very handy), trying combinations of handshakes (CTS, RTS and DTR), but to no avail.

Any ideas?

--Roland

This information claims that you actually have to inject power into the spaceball 1003 through its port.  https://spacemice.org/pdf/sbsdk.txt

[GanjaTron]

Hi Weblacky,

I'm powering it directly from the 9-10V output of the 8-pin DIN connector, so no need to inject. The SB definitely powers up and beeps.

If I connect CTS on the DSUB9 to CTS on the DIN8, the SB complains in morse code. This is documented at https://spacemice.org/pdf/sbsdk.txt.

There's 4 DIP switches inside which apparently set the baud rate. Maybe it's not set to the default 9600 baud? I haven't found any documentation on this.

--Roland

[weblacky]

Hi Weblacky,

I'm powering it directly from the 9-10V output of the 8-pin DIN connector, so no need to inject. The SB definitely powers up and beeps.

If I connect CTS on the DSUB9 to CTS on the DIN8, the SB complains in morse code. This is documented at https://spacemice.org/pdf/sbsdk.txt.

There's 4 DIP switches inside which apparently set the baud rate. Maybe it's not set to the default 9600 baud? I haven't found any documentation on this.

--Roland

not a direct answer but found wayback nekochan page on direct software setup: https://web.archive.org/web/201408142326...Space_Ball

Also possible someone's test program? https://web.archive.org/web/201511241623.../libsball/

[GanjaTron]

Thanks, Weblacky.

Libsball looks promising, as the code might give some insight into how the serial port is set up. Sballfly sounds like fun too -- if it finally works.

--Roland

---

Btw, John Hilton himself confirmed there's an Easter Egg in the Spaceball 1003 firmware:
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com...controller

Now I'm curious...

--Roland