From: Gene Buckle on
To: David Murray
Re: PS/2 Mouse support on C64 and VIC20
By: David Murray to comp.sys.cbm on Thu Nov 12 2009 07:30 pm

> I wanted to raise this topic again.. For those who are unfamiliar, a
> little refresher.. A couple of years ago I developed a mouse driver
> for connecting a PS/2 mouse directly to the userport of a Commodore

David, if you're going to develop a bit of hardware in order to connect a PS/2
mouse to the user port, why not go a little bit further and build an adaptor
that would allow a person to connect a PS/2 or USB mouse to the standard 9 pin
joystick port? Having 1351 compatability(sp) would give you the widest
audience and could be done with a few parts and a PIC or AVR uController.

g.

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From: U. v. Bassewitz on
David Murray <adric22(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> I wanted to raise this topic again.. For those who are unfamiliar, a
> little refresher.. A couple of years ago I developed a mouse driver
> for connecting a PS/2 mouse directly to the userport of a Commodore
> DTV without any extra hardware. But the driver didn't work on a real
> C64 because I had to disable badlines on the DTV before I could get
> reliable operation.

Here is a small board for the Atari, that - according to the developer -
should also work for the C64 (but this is untested):

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/134949-advance-orders-for-cmi08-ps2-mouse-interface/

I have one, but haven't built and tried it until now, so apart from
posting the link I cannot comment ...

Regards


Uz


--
Ullrich von Bassewitz uz(a)spamtrap.musoftware.de
17:18:04 up 4 days, 1:44, 1 user, load average: 0.08, 0.08, 0.08
From: RobertB on
The Indivision Micromys PS/2 adapter at

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=877

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
http://www.sccaners.org
From: David Murray on

> maybe it makes more sense to build an adaptor that converts a PS/2
> mouse into a 1531 compatible mouse and plugs into the joystick port.

Hmm.. Seems we have a concensus.. Everybody wants to plug it into
their existing joystick port. Okay, I understand the benefit of
this. But I should point out that the hardware to do this is much
more expensive. A good example is the device already being sold for
this purpose which costs around $40. My design would cost only $1.49
for the cost of a Mini-DIN connector or could even be done for no cost
at all if the person wanted to solder the cables from the mouse
directly to the userport connector (I wouldn't recommend) but you get
the idea. Also I believe direct interaction with the PS/2 mouse would
give more reliable and accurate results. granted, I've never tried
this converter device, but I have tried my own design and the mouse
movements are just as natural as you would expect on a modern PC. And
it would leave the joystick ports free for other stuff.

As for software compatibility. I'm sure that is important to some of
you. But I really do not currently use any software on the 8-bit
platform that uses a mouse. The only software I ever did use was GEOS
128 and I have no need for that in this modern world. Even my
favorite drawing program of the time, Doodle, only used a joystick.

So.. My reasoning is that the direct connection of the PS/2 mouse is
the best way to go into the future.
From: Mark McDougall on
David Murray wrote:

> Hmm.. Seems we have a concensus.. Everybody wants to plug it into
> their existing joystick port. Okay, I understand the benefit of
> this. But I should point out that the hardware to do this is much
> more expensive. A good example is the device already being sold for
> this purpose which costs around $40.

IMHO this is by _far_ the best option, as it gives instant compatibility
with all exsiting mouse software. I don't think $40 is unreasonable given
the nature of the product either - I made a small batch of Amiga PS/2
adapters and it cost just about that to manufacture each one.

> Also I believe direct interaction with the PS/2 mouse would
> give more reliable and accurate results.

I've never used a C64 mouse, but I gather you're implying that the mouse is
_not_ as smooth & accurate as the PS/2 version - yes??? Then perhaps the
inaccuracies are inherent in the original mouse itself, rather than the
protocol and/or frequency at which the mouse is sampled? In that case, using
a PS/2 adapter would alleviate those problems.

Regards,

--
| Mark McDougall | "Electrical Engineers do it
| <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug> | with less resistance!"
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