[Coco] Mouse

[Rogelio Perea]

No amount of internal rewiring will allow a serial mouse to be used with a
CoCo.

The CoCo mouse & joystick are analog devices that merely return a variable
voltage back to the CoCo through the joystick ports, the A/D converter in
the CoCo then reads the voltage and translates it to a 6 bit binary value
(range from 0 to 63 decimal).

The serial mouse outputs 'events' derived from electronics inside the mouse
that read the mouse movement from the encoder wheels - this mechanical basic
design later went to be emulated using an iR sensor on the mouse - the
principle of sending binary data from the mouse to the computer port remains
more or less unchanged.

There was a serial mouse driver written for OS9 to allow the CoCo to use a
serial mouse, but you'd need the RS232 pak to use it.

Diecom produced The Rat graphics design package and along with it an adapter
box to allow it to use a serial mouse - I don't have any more details than
that, never used it - maybe someone else has some insight on that mouse
adapter.



-=[ Rogelio ]=-




On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 9:03 AM, Bill <cwgordon at carolina.rr.com> wrote:

> Has anyone used a PC serial mouse and rewired it to work on the Coco? I
> have
> 2 original Coco joysticks that are too damaged to work, but the plug and
> the
> wires are still in great shape. Can it be spliced onto the PC mouse and
> made
> to work?