spaceball 5000 problems

[nxprog]

My 3dconnexion Spaceball 5000 began acting erratically. It reverses direction on a whim while rotating... I'm running windows 7 64bit and NX 6. I was hoping for two things here... help getting this thing working correctly now and a recommendation on a new space ball. The one I have isn't supported on W7 64...so i may just buy a new one....but i need to get the one i have running now!...thanks

 

[JohnRBaker]

Have you tried to get the latest driver (which may be a problem as the 5000 is basically obsolete, which you seem to have already discovered).

As for a new Spaceball, if you want to have lots of options at your fingertips, go for the 'SpacePilot PRO' (the high-end). If you don't care about a bunch of controls, go for the 'SpaceNavigator' (the low-end). If you need something portable, try to 'SpaceNavigator for Notebooks' (note that I've got one of each of the 3 mentioned above and they all work fine on Windows 7 and virtually all versions of UG/NX back to UG V16.0).

Note that I've never used the 'SpaceExplorer', which falls somewhere between the 'SpacePilot PRO' and the smaller 'SpaceNavigators', but I assume that it would be a good choice as well.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[moog2]

I'm still using a 5000 on NX6 windows 7 64bit,
I've had no such problems, it sounds more like a bad connection internally.
My version is 3DxWare 5.7.2
firmware 3.11

 

[nxprog]

I have driver version 6.7.13, firmware 2.23. Im beginning to think maybe it is hardware issue...I've had this thing for 8 years, maybe its just fried. Its worked fine up until this point on Windows 7. I tried restoring windows back to earlier points and still no luck.

What I have how compares to the SpaceExplorer... I may try the SpacePilot Pro...that thing is huge!

 

[jerry1423]

Sometimes it helps to stop and then restart the driver.
There are icons for "stop driver" and "start driver" that you will need to find the the 3Dconnection directory.
All the latest drivers are on their web page.