What are the issues in putting a 3 button mouse on a MacII?

John R. Galloway jrg at Apple.COM
Wed Mar 1 11:31:22 AEST 1989


I am strongly considering getting a MacII for my Unix development.
I understand that X 11 under A/UX uses the cursor keys for the left and
right mouse buttons.  If you are really going to use X this does not seem
like a very workable solution (i.e. ok for occasional use but makeing any
common mouse action require an extra hand movement seems pretty undesrieable).

What are the issues in connecting a 3 button mouse to a MacII?  the possible
confgurations in order of desireability seem to be:
	add serial mouse to existing or additional serial port, add a
		A/UX driver for it and use this mouse only under X, and
		the standard ADB mouse for Mac OS.
	same as above, but modify/replace the existing mouse driver to
		allow Mac/OS to view all the buttons as "one" and for
		X to distinguish them, thus having only one mouse for both. 
	same as above but build a serial->ADB converter.  Can this be
		powered off the ADB?  i.e. as long as it doesn't need
		another cord it would not be a hassle.
Are there issues that make this practicaly impossible?  Is it doable by a
third party?  What gives? Of course what I would REALLY like is to be able to
run a (32 bit clean) MacOS program IN an X window, but thats another topic.

apple!jrg	John R. Galloway, Jr.       contract programmer, San Jose, Ca

These are my views, NOT Apple's, I am a GUEST here, not an employee!!



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