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VIC-20 and Mouse

M

mpickering

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 8, 2006
Messages
70
Location
Potomac, MD
Does anyone have any knowledge of anyone ever trying to get a mouse to work with the VIC-20? I'm sure the question has to be bordering on insanity.

I've been working on getting my feet wet again in the old hardware and been tinkering with RS-232 programming. I have an Omnitronix RS232 box on the user port of my VIC and was wondering if anyone had ever tried getting a serial mouse to work on the machine?

On a 3.5K VIC, sacrificing 1/7th of the total RAM for the RS-232 buffer plus whatever code needed to interact with the mouse must seem like folly but I think it could be fun. Kids ask "Where's the mouse?" when shown such a machine, why not give them one?

My research indicates this ought to work. I have copies of the Microsoft mouse protocol, the user port supports the 1200 baud rate needed by the rat and the VIC-20 Programmer's Guide happily provides information on how to talk RS232. The magic box on the port takes care of the translation.

I've been thinking of tiny GUIs and simple games on my old VIC. I also have 3K, 8K and 16K RAM cartridges so I have room to sacrifice for mouse driver code. And with the RS232, I can use serial hookups to possibly move code back and forth between my Linux boxen and my oldies.

Thoughts?

Matt
 
It'd be really cool to try and make a mouse though. That's something a friend and I never did but were going to a few years ago. Making a joystick is pretty easy though. Really porting a mouse (I think) would just require the right shorting going on for the serial port to send the right signals.

Modern mice use IR transmitters/receivers and those fine point gears to determine how the mouse is being moved.
 
However both 1350 and in particular 1351 mice are quite hard to find, fetching big $$$ whenever they're for sale in the public.

The idea to use a RS-232 interface is interesting though. I don't know how a PC works in this respect, what kind of signals or values are passed to the serial port when you move the mouse. An alternative is to build your own mouse interface, see schematics here. It will take a serial mouse and make it act like a Commodore 1351 mouse.

No matter which kind of mouse or interface you use, you'll still be short of VIC software to use it. It won't be too hard to write your own, just that you need to do it. Some programs using paddles may react to input, but I don't think in the proper way.
 
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