Eee pc hacking
![eee pc hacking eee pc hacking](https://c4.wallpaperflare.com/wallpaper/988/462/473/itzmauuuroo-hackers-anonymous-hd-wallpaper-preview.jpg)
Of course, in my typical fashion, I did this without dwelling on the thought (sort of like being with your buddies and jumping off a high cliff into water – if you wait and think – its too late – just do it!)Ĭlose-up of the trackball. Why? Because I was about to put a hole in the palm rest. This was the most difficult part of doing this mod.
![eee pc hacking eee pc hacking](https://notebookitalia.it/images/stories/asus_eee_pc_hacking_2.jpg)
Showing the trackwheel mounted on the underside of the palm rest. Also note that I had to move the CMOS battery on top of the SD card slot loader. Showing the wiring and touchwheel on the topside of the mainboard. The pics look worse than it is (mostly because of the wire melting a bit). If you do this, make sure you have a fine tipped soldering iron and very steady hand as the pinouts of the mini pic-e are very close together. However, for USB D- and D+ I went directly to pins 36 and 38. I used JKK’s guide to determine the USB connection points. All large bits removed from the mainboard and an extension soldered onto the trackball. Showing the complete unit ready to be mounted in the EEE. The neoprene cover makes for great protection! Try it. Before I started working on the EEE, I wanted something to protect the LCD. Showing some preliminary tests to see the fit. The middle img shows the parts on the topside of the mainboard. The leftmost img is the final product after removing all the large bits (rightmost img) as well as the USB and trackball connectors. The following 3 pics, show the mainboard at various states of desoldering parts. I also had to desolder the two CAPs and give their leads more room so I could bend them down. So, the connectors to the left had to go.
![eee pc hacking eee pc hacking](https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/2009/01/06/asus_t91_660px.jpg)
The height limitations of the EEE underside bay limited me to the height of the yellow box. Here you can see the thickness of the board. The following pic shows the size of the mainboard with the trackball attached. So, my only option was to use the main board from the Mighty Mouse and hope I could cram it into the underside (memory / SSD) bay of the EEE 901. After doing some testing, I found that the signals generated by the Hall Effect sensors in the Apple mouse do not translate well to the signals generated by an IR emitter/receiver (I was hoping that they would both show as voltage drops between 0-5V – but it wasn’t the case. After figuring this out, my plan was to then try to hack the signals into a tiny USB wired mouse like this one (since it has a small main board). I figured these out on my own – so no guarantees – but it works for me. The below images show the pinouts and signals from the Mighty Mouse trackball.
#Eee pc hacking how to
This would mean I would have to figure out a way to get the entire BB in the EEE as well as how to interpret the signals to translate to (for example) a small wheel mouse trackwheel. However, the electronics/hall effect sensors are part of the main board and not the removable track ball unit. When I first starting thinking about a solution, I immediately thought about using the trackball from a Blackberry. Thanks to those of you who can appreciate the hobby of DIY. I just find it funny when reading some of the responses out there as they either seem to be arrogant of the concept of DIY, or just like to get their post counts up :-). While some consider these things an effort, others (like myself) consider them fun and challenging. As noted in this post, I dont like the 2 finger scrolling. I like to hack and DIY things – never satisfied with status-quo. To answer the ‘whatever floats your boat’ question, I guess its just that. 6 months later (and counting), it’s still working as good as it did when I first installed it. To answer the quality question – the trackball has been installed since July 09. There have also been a number of posts that share similar themes that either point to the Mighty Mouse being trash, or questions as to why would someone want to do this hack when the EEE already has two finger scrolling on the trackpad. There have been a number of blogs and forums that have picked up this DIY, which is nice to see. Read on for details, a video, and instructions… I figured the Mighty Mouse would be more of a challenge anyhow. Of course, there are out there, but its ball acts as a mouse controller (not for scrolling) and I didn’t want to pay the price. The Apple Mighty Mouse was the best candidate becase the trackball acts like a wheel on the mouse – I can use it solely for scrolling rapidly through pages of content. So, since it’s never my intent to leave well enough alone, and I was itching for something to take apart and hack, I decided to integrate a trackball into my EEE 901. Why: I found the 2-finger scrolling using the touchpad a PINTA. What: Hack the innards of an Apple Mighty Mouse into an EEE 901.