[Durham] Three button mice

Oliver Burnett-Hall olly at burnett-hall.co.uk
Thu Nov 11 19:03:25 UTC 2010


On Wed, 10 Nov 2010 22:16:25 +0000
Martin Ward <martin at gkc.org.uk> wrote:
>
> On Wednesday 10 Nov 2010 at 22:03, "Oliver Burnett-Hall"
> <olly at burnett- hall.co.uk> wrote:
> > 
> > Has anyone got any other suggestions?  It must be possible to get a
> > three-button mouse from somewhere.

Thanks for these suggestions, your ebay-fu is much stronger than mine (I
did try looking there, but couldn't get past all the two-button +
scroll wheel mice that claim they have three buttons).

> http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Trust-AMI-Mouse-Serial-3-Button-Ergonomic-
> Mouse-/180517540117?pt=UK_Computing_ComputerComponents_KeyboardsMice&hash=item2a07af1115

And there I was, claiming that PS/2 mice were retro.  I've just checked,
and was slightly surprised to find that my computer does have a serial
port, but still.

I remember that the first Linux box I built, back in 1999, had a serial
mouse, and I remember struggling with to get it to work and having to
cat /dev/cua0 to find out whether there was any input to read or not.
Nostalgia, they don't make it like they used to.

> http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MOUSE-SYSTEMS-900119-254-3BUTTON-PARALLEL-OPTICAL-
> MOUSE-/300491332460?pt=UK_Computing_ComputerComponents_KeyboardsMice&hash=item45f6addb6c

I don't even there remember there being such a thing as parallel mice.
Certainly not parallel optical mice.  Or optical mice that look like
they were made in 1980.

One quick visit to Wikipedia later
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_Systems) and it turns out that
Mouse Systems were the first manufacturers of optical mice, founded
back in 1982.  I've learnt something today.

However I don't have either a parallel port or a desire to spend £22.99
so will have to pass on this one too.

> http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Belkin-3-button-USB-Mouse-Model-
> P57603EA-/260689494299?pt=UK_Computing_ComputerComponents_KeyboardsMice&hash=item3cb24e011b

In comparison, this looks incredibly boring and so will do me fine.
Thanks for finding this.

- olly



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