Light Pen Software

[jmetal88]

I was thinking about trying to build my own light pen for the PCjr, but before I do, I was wondering:

What software available for the PCjr can make use of the light pen?
Where can I get such software?

Also, there's a program for the Tandy 1000 I read about called Penmouse (from a company called Warp Speed) that's supposed to allow the Tandy 1000 light pen (software compatible to the PCjr light pen) to function with most DOS programs as a mouse. Does anyone know where I might possibly be able to find a copy of this program?

[Brutman]

I waited about 10 years to get a light pen, and finally got one in the past year. It isn't perfect, but it is interesting. (I'd like to build my own too.)

I don't know of anything that uses a light pen - I had to write my own routines in BASIC. The funny thing about a light pen is that, well, it needs light to be able to sense where it is. So on an unlit portion of the screen it is blind. The solution is to have a grey or white background on every spot on the screen, but that seemed like a kludge.

[southernbob]

I was thinking about trying to build my own light pen for the PCjr, but before I do, I was wondering:

What software available for the PCjr can make use of the light pen?
Where can I get such software?

Also, there's a program for the Tandy 1000 I read about called Penmouse (from a company called Warp Speed) that's supposed to allow the Tandy 1000 light pen (software compatible to the PCjr light pen) to function with most DOS programs as a mouse. Does anyone know where I might possibly be able to find a copy of this program?

See if this is what you want. I have never used it so don't know anything about it.
Bob

[jmetal88]

I was thinking about trying to build my own light pen for the PCjr, but before I do, I was wondering:

What software available for the PCjr can make use of the light pen?
Where can I get such software?

Also, there's a program for the Tandy 1000 I read about called Penmouse (from a company called Warp Speed) that's supposed to allow the Tandy 1000 light pen (software compatible to the PCjr light pen) to function with most DOS programs as a mouse. Does anyone know where I might possibly be able to find a copy of this program?

See if this is what you want. I have never used it so don't know anything about it.
Bob

That looks very promising. The program that was bundled with the Warp Speed Light Pen was called Control, and there is a Control.exe in that archive, so that might just be what I'm looking for!

Of course, I'll have no idea if it actually is what I'm looking for until after I get a light pen constructed.

[jmetal88]

Sweet! That's exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately, my homemade light pen doesn't seem to work - It just makes the screen flash madly when I flip on its switch. I guess I need to check my wiring.

[jmetal88]

Alright, I can't get my light pen to do anything. Either the generic phototransistor/schmitt trigger setup doesn't work with the PCjr, or I need a more sensitive phototransistor. The circuit I built supposedly works on the Vectrex.

[jmetal88]

Of course, the third possibility is that the software just doesn't work. Mike, could you post your BASIC routines for me so I could check this out? I don't have any BASIC references for the PCjr here so I highly doubt I'd be able to figure it out for myself.

[southernbob]

I found another diskette from Warp Speed (the other software I posted was from Warp Speed also).
This one is labelled Light Pen Controller Ver 1.1. The 2 JPG files are scans of the brief documentation
that I found. Again, I have not tried this software but it is straight from the diskette.
Bob

[jmetal88]

Thanks, I'm pretty sure the first one was the disk I wanted, though.

I couldn't get my own light pen to work, but I kind of got my Sega Light Phaser to work, although the calibration was way off and hits weren't anywhere near consistent.

I might just give up on the idea of using a light pen as a mouse on here. Windows 3.0 didn't recognize penmouse as a valid mouse driver anyway.