tezza
Veteran Member
Am I right in thinking that the Microsoft Bus Mouse was the first Mouse for the PC? That they came out before serial mice? As soon as the latter appeared, Bus (card) mice were superceded?
Tez
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- Thread starter gonekrazy
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Am I right in thinking that the Microsoft Bus Mouse was the first Mouse for the PC? That they came out before serial mice? As soon as the latter appeared, Bus (card) mice were superceded?
Tez
Great Hierophant
Veteran Member
I believe that Microsoft released a serial mouse (25-pin variety) along with their first bus mouse, but bus mice were more common early amount PC mice than serial mice.
In the early days, there was no guarantee that a user would have a free serial port for a mouse. In IBM's pre-PS/2 systems, a serial port was an upgrade card that filled a slot. Moreover, many cards only offered one serial port or an empty socket for a second serial controller. In such an environment, a bus mouse would have a niche. Once two serial ports became integrated on the motherboard, the bus mouse had lost its appeal.
krebizfan
Veteran Member
Problem with mouse, I doubt it. I still have the newer of the serial mice I attached to the 286 and it worked last week when I hooked it to a Pentium. Now, Compuadd cutting corners on the serial port was possible. I bought a 286 in 1988 because I couldn't afford a 386.
I'm pretty sure that Win95 and later no longer support bus mice so advantages of bus mice are rather moot. There are times when I wish I could still place a mouse on IRQ-5 allowing use of both serial ports for functions other than the mouse. Or a time machine to encourage the use of PS/2 mouse ports in systems built in the 1990s.
Mouse history: Mouse Systems and Logitech both introduced in 1982 serial mice. Microsoft introduced their bus mouse in 1983 and their serial mouse in 1984. One odd detail is that Logitech claims that they needed an external power supply for serial mice until the 1985 model. I know that RS-232 had lots of variations but I didn't expect a mouse would overwhelm any maximum current level.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
One advantage of a serial mouse is that you can plug it in and unplug it after the operating system has booted. Not so for the PS/2 style mouse--if the keyboard controller doesn't see it on bootup, it's not there. That's something that I've never understood--why nobody implemented a keyboard controller command that says "check again for a mouse".
My first encounter with a PIC microcontroller was in the innards of a mouse (well, trackball actually).
My earliest non-IBM PS/2 mouse style adventures started with motherboards that had a header for a "PS/2 mouse", but no DIN connector (had to be fabricated separately). When USB came along, the same deal--it's there, but go find your own connectors.
232C line drivers/receivers can be hungry beasts. Take a look at the spec sheet for one of the more common ones--the MC1488 and the MC1489. (Tidbit of my own: many engineers still think that these are TTL devices. They're not--they're a member of the much older DTL family). I suspect that even late-model serial mice fudge quite a bit on the output voltage levels.
But we're back to the future--your wireless mouse doesn't exactly extract its power from the ether, does it?
Mine does, its the Logitech Ether series :D