I was just thinking this the other day. I also remember that you had to open the mouse to clean it because the little internal rollers got tangled in grossness.
And the balls in the mice at school would get thrown around the room/lost/stolen until the computer teachers glued them shut so you couldn’t clean the rollers and it was almost impossible to use them
Our first mouse plugged into the serial port with a pass-through connector so you could still use the modem. There was a power adapter that plugged in there, too. Then you had to load the driver for the few programs that used it… though I think it also had a mode where it would work on a text screen, since so few program supported it. We didn’t use it much.
This would have been on our IBM PC XT clone in the early 90s with 512k of RAM and a 5.25" floppy drive for storage. I don’t think we used it with the PCjr we had before that, but I don’t remember.
Hey y’all remember when mice had balls in them? turns to dust
I was just thinking this the other day. I also remember that you had to open the mouse to clean it because the little internal rollers got tangled in grossness.
And the balls in the mice at school would get thrown around the room/lost/stolen until the computer teachers glued them shut so you couldn’t clean the rollers and it was almost impossible to use them
They had that softness that made them feel harmless, but their weight was unmistakably dangerous.
Administering a school where there were no computer mice (but were computers)… Is there a picture for that?
Wait, there weren’t mice on any our Apple II in my elementary school’s computer room.
Or keyboard plugs for that matter. Welcome to my crypt I guess.
Hey, that’s exactly the computers I was talking about. The IIe, and students playing where in the world is Carmen Santiago, logo writer etc.
I used to refer to this as “cleaning the ball cavity.”
Our first mouse plugged into the serial port with a pass-through connector so you could still use the modem. There was a power adapter that plugged in there, too. Then you had to load the driver for the few programs that used it… though I think it also had a mode where it would work on a text screen, since so few program supported it. We didn’t use it much.
This would have been on our IBM PC XT clone in the early 90s with 512k of RAM and a 5.25" floppy drive for storage. I don’t think we used it with the PCjr we had before that, but I don’t remember.
You were doing what with mouse balls?! Why would you even have those near your computer? even older dust
And having to clean those rollers…