• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Mouse support in early DOS 2.1 / 3.3

W

WimWalther

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2019
Messages
449
Location
St. Paul, MN
Howdy folks,

I recently got a genuine Tandy 8250 serial card for my Tandy 1000EX (sort of a PC-Jr clone without the suck), and I'd like to get it working with a mouse. I also happen to have a couple of serial mice and a 25pin F to 9pin M adapter for the card - so I figure I'm all set, hardware-wise.

But I've never set up a mouse in DOS, nor do I know which driver is appropriate to the installed DOS 2.1 / 3.3 environments. I can boot to either version, but would like mouse support in both.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
The 1986 MS Manual says the mouse driver requires DOS 2.0 or later; DOS 3.3 was a year in the future. Most of the drivers through the early 90s would work on DOS 3.3 since that was the setup I was using. Logitech mouse drivers were the same.

I think Cutemouse won't work on DOS 2.1 since it calls INT 21h functions 58 which first showed up in DOS 2.11.
 
krebizfan said:
I think Cutemouse won't work on DOS 2.1 since it calls INT 21h functions 58 which first showed up in DOS 2.11.
Click to expand...
The Tandy version of DOS included with the EX was 2.11. I *want* to say I tried Cutemouse at least once on 2.11 after I built my own serial card for my EX, but I honestly can’t swear to it.
 
Also have some in 720k and 1.44meg format as well. The mouse 2 drivers a a tad over 17k.

I most likely have other original mouse drive disks in bins out on the garage.....
IMG_20220424_163957.jpg
 
Last edited:
Try the genius mouse diskette. That always worked with alot of mice for me. Swear lately im the mouse king over here. Over 50 so far... LOL. Mostly early ps2 or serial.
 
Last edited:
twolazy said:
Try the genius mouse diskette. That always worked with alot of mice for me. Swear lately im the mouse king over here. Over 50 so far... LOL. Mostly early ps2 or serial.
Click to expand...
A mouse without a tail and balls is just crawl ;)
 
Last edited:
Well, the DOS-mode mouse service API is vectored off of Int 0x33. AFAIK, this meant nothing special to DOS 2 (or 1.x). So if installed via TSR, there should be no barriers to the service being available.
 
This is all good info, thanks to all of you. I believe another poster was correct that the DOS 2.X provided with the EX is in fact 2.11.

I'll probably try cutemouse first, as its just a 2-button serial, and the small 3.5k size is attractive. Too bad that cutemouse lacks any real end-user docs.. frigging curse of F/OSS! I did read the notes in the src, but not any useful info there, excrpt to programmers.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Well, the DOS-mode mouse service API is vectored off of Int 0x33. AFAIK, this meant nothing special to DOS 2 (or 1.x). So if installed via TSR, there should be no barriers to the service being available.
Click to expand...

Hiya Chuck, LTNS!

You're right, the 2.1 provided with the EX is 2.11. Thanks again, I know you've been helpful to me in the past.
 
Turns out that the DOS 3.3 install on the EX has two files, MOUSE.COM and MOUSE.SYS. So I ran MOUSE.COM and the driver reports as installed without error.

But the mouse does nothing - no moving cursor when the mouse moves. Shouldn't the cursor appear?

The serial card is set for the standard COM1 addresx & interrupt.
 
there is no mouse cursor at the DOS command prompt, you need to run a program that uses the mouse to see the cursor
 
A good program for testing the mouse might be the Norton Commander.
 
What's a really small & simple terminal program that I can use to test my serial port via loopback?

I made a simple pin 2+3 adapter. Will this work or do I need to tie handshake lines to ground? If the term supports software flow control, just tying TX to RX should work, yes?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top