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Very strange mouse...

N

NathanAllan

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Jun 1, 2003
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Bellevue, Colorado
I need help identifying this mouse. First, it's a three button ball-type. It has a db9 serial type port but only pins 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 are pinned. It has an atari-style molded connector. It is apparently brand new. I got it in the box and it won't work on a pc-compatible machine. Made in China, FCC ID: EMJMUSG C. I tried the fcc id but got nothing back. Rather, I got a lot of stuff that didn't apply to this mouse. I got this at a radio club auction after the auction ended from a box of junk that noone bid on.

Any ideas?

Nathan
 
It can not be an Amiga mouse. It uses pins 1-4 for mouse movement, pins 5,6,9 for buttons, 7 for +5V and 8 for ground. It sounds like your mouse would multiplex signals? I doubt it is an old Macintosh or SGI mouse neither. Those were the ones I could find on http://pinouts.ru but there are more places to search for pinouts.
 
It might be a bus mouse. Some early bus mice for old machines used a DB9 connector.

(My PCjr with the MS Booster has this setup .. the bus mouse plugs into a DB9 connector. This was done before the DB9 connector became associated with serial ports.)
 
I forgot to add, it's a db9 female. I don't know if that matters to anyone, but it's a detail. I thought about how it has so few pins and so many functions and figured it had to be multiplexed. I can't realy see any other way for it to work.

I worked pinouts.ru over last night for about 2 hours and found nothing similar to this mouse. I almost posted out of frustration, but went to play with the gerbils instead(we just got em a salt lick wheel and they loved it-- made em hyper, so I didn't have to be about this mouse).

I am totally stumped over this mouse. I have no clue what it goes to.

I opened it up and tried to see if there were any markings, but no. There was a chip and parts of a mouse. Do all mice use led's with those wheels with holes in them as senseors?? This one does. Also, the chip says E-CMOS, EC3568A1, 9509, the board has TUNG TA like it was a maker name, lots of other markings where parts are. Should I look for some kind of characteristic mark to peg it as a certain kind of mouse?? It has a 5-pin conn on the inside with four of them pinned.

Nathan
 
Strange Mouse

Strange Mouse

Arw you sure that all of the possible functions are used? It may be someone's idea of a mouse for an Apple II, to be connected into the Game Control input via an adaptor cable, and all that it actually does in provide the analog inputs to the two inuts that can be used by the game controls that come with the computer.
Ray
 
I believe most such devices would have a female connector, if nothing else to differentiate from CGA/EGA video connectors or otherwise?
 
The 3-button format would tend to suggest a newer machine.

I can see it now, it's likely an Amstrad mouse (and k-b) PC1640 I've been looking for for many eons. :^) If you search thru the classiccomp from about 5 years ago you might run across Tony Duell's exposition on mice interfaces.

Lawrence
 
I looked up the Amstrad mouse connector pinout and it said that it used more pins that are pinned on this thing. Micom, please throw up a link so I can get this thing a home!! I mean that I want to give it to somebody that'll use it. If you can use it you're free to have it. But seriously, it only has 5 pins active. All my searching turns up that amstrad used more pins. Am I missing something???
 
mbbruteman,
do you have a mouse like this one? If so, do you have the same pins??

I promise I wasn't ignoring you, I just got caught up lookin' up stuff.
 
I'm not concerned about being ignored, and the thought hadn't crossed my mind .. Lots to do around here.

I have to do the mouse out. It's with a PCjr system that I don't often use, so it has to be dug out. I'll also have to open the adapter to give you an idea of what the pins do.
 
Nathan,

I have an adaptor here from an old 'standard' PC-type serial mouse, and it has only five pins as well. It's the old 25-pin connector, and the populated pins are: 2, 3, 4, 7, 20. That pretty much coresponds to your pinout. On the 25-pin connector, #7 is ground, whereas on the 9-pin, gnd is #1. The next two pins, #2 & 3 are Tx & Rx, but are reversed from one connector to the other (I don't recall which is which). That leaves us with pin #20 <--> #8, which I also don't recall the signal, so I'll just have to guess that they are the same for both jacks (I don't have time to look it up right now).

--T
 
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Ok, so I looked it up anyways, to refresh my memory. I'm soooo confused! My Programmer's PC Sourcebook lists at least 4 different pinouts for the 25-pin connector, and 3 different 9-pin, depending on make/model/etc.
My best guess is that your mouse probably will work with *some* flavor of PC.

I believe that the pinout of mine is:

2 = TX Transmit Data - Mouse talks to computer on this line
3 = RX Receive Data - Mouse listens to computer
4 = RTS RequestToSend - Mouse asks computer if it may send data to it
7 = GND Ground
20 = DTR DataTerminalReady - Computer tells mouse that it is ready to receive data from it

The above signals are probably the minimum needed for a mouse.

--T
 
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Or at least the mouse may require a special driver (see the zip file) to work on any PC as a serial mouse. Both Logitech and Microsoft mouses used their special drivers in DOS (and included in Windows, I'm sure).
 
Mystery solved, it seems. It's a serial port mouse that needs a driver to work. Funny there's no ground going to it.

1 carrier detect
2 recieve data
3 transmit data
4 data terminal ready
8 clear to send

...are straight to the mouse. Thanks for everybody's help!
 

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NathanAllan said:
Mystery solved, it seems. It's a serial port mouse that needs a driver to work. Funny there's no ground going to it.

1 carrier detect
2 recieve data
3 transmit data
4 data terminal ready
8 clear to send

...are straight to the mouse. Thanks for everybody's help!
Click to expand...

Perhaps the cable is shielded, and uses that as it's only gnd?

--T
 
Carlsson,
I would have tried the .zip but I don't have a way to transfer files to the win95 laptop yet <sigh> back to compatability issues. I have tried several times to connect the two via serial port but the win2k machine just won't cooperate. And it also has no fdd, the controller died and no usb fdd. I guess I'll be getting one of those soon.
Terry, the whole thing is made of plastic, the only metal are the pins themselves, so that can't be it. It's wierd. Based on all the erial standards that I know there *has* to be a ground.
Until I can get that file to a floppy and onto the win95 laptop I'm going to (frustratingly) put this mouse away.
It really bugs me when something as simple as this gets left hanging <gnashing teeth>
 
I found a mouse similar to this one, nearly identical in fact. The second one is a ps/2 connected one, and here are a list of differences:

main chip on serial: 9509; ps/2:9506, pic of larger differences (camera takes bad nighttime shots)
http://picasaweb.google.com/nathan.dkassandra4/UntitledAlbum#5269070575321683330

I have since gotten a floppy drive for this big machine (one that I was on at the beginning of this thread died, and this controller is not dead yet) so I will be trying out your driver, carllson. When I get back to the win95 laptop at the bookstore.

What an update! Think I forgot about this !@#$ mouse? No, it basically haunted me, I wanted to know something so small that it bugged me to no end-- it was like a hangnail and prety much still is until I get it nailed down. I'll know tomorrow, more about this mystery mouse.

Got its counterpart in a crate of old mice, and it felt like getting a new lead in a cold case TV episode.
 
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