[PLUG] OT (Hardware): Do pointy devices wear out?

[Galen Seitz]

Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:

>   My good ol' Kensington Orbit trackball is acting balky. I've castrated it
> and checked for impacted threads and the usual culprits that cause it to
> drag and jump instead of smoothly tracking across the screen. Nothing there
> that I haven't cleaned out. I just put some alcohol on the two rollers in
> case they had warn smooth.
> 
>   Could these devices just plumb wear out? I've had this guy for at least
> 5.5 years and it's really nice to use. But, trying to do fine movements when
> creating illustrations in tgif is an exercise in frustration because of the
> jumpy movements.

It seems unlikely that it would degrade as you describe.  I would expect
a hard failure.  Are you certain that you cleaned _everything_?  I suppose
the LEDs in the opto circuitry could be getting weak, but I think dust
is a much more likely culprit.  Is the trackball the old slotted wheel
type, or does it have LEDs aimed at a speckled ball?  If the former,
make certain that you have gotten all of the dust out of the optos.  If
it's a speckled ball, you probably got it as clean as it can get.  It
may really be dying.

galen