[TUHS] Depraz/Logitech Digimouse manual

John Floren john at jfloren.net
Sat Aug 7 02:52:15 AEST 2021


Ah, right. I opened the mouse because one of the encoders didn't seem to be working (it worked fine again this morning, who knows...) and discovered that there was something duct taped inside the plastic shell:

http://jfloren.net/content/depraz/inside.jpg

Peeling back the tape, I saw what I first took to be chunks of flattened beer cans:

http://jfloren.net/content/depraz/reveal.jpg

A closer look showed that they were the wrappers which cover the corks of wine bottles. Up into the 1980s, these were made out of lead, and by flattening five of them, a previous owner of the mouse was able to add quite a bit of extra weight to it:

http://jfloren.net/content/depraz/wrapper.jpg


john

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

On Friday, August 6th, 2021 at 9:34 AM, ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:

> john, don't forget to mention the beer can
>
> On Fri, Aug 6, 2021 at 9:29 AM John Floren john at jfloren.net wrote:
>
> > I stuck an Arduino on it and with surprisingly little code I have it acting like a 3-button USB mouse.
> >
> > The only problem is that the pointer doesn't move smoothly. It does OK left-to-right, and can move down pretty well, but going up is a problem. I think pushing the mouse forward tends to move the ball away from the Y-axis wheel, and the old spring on the tensioner just doesn't have the gumption to hold that heavy ball bearing in any more.
> >
> > john
> >
> > ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> >
> > On Wednesday, August 4th, 2021 at 9:12 PM, ron minnich rminnich at gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > > John, you can see that "stick a bird on it" -> "stick an arduino on
> > >
> > > it" -> "stick a pi on it" has gone as you once predicted :-)
> > >
> > > On Wed, Aug 4, 2021 at 8:59 PM John Floren john at jfloren.net wrote:
> > >
> > > > ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> > > >
> > > > On Wednesday, August 4th, 2021 at 6:12 PM, Henry Bent henry.r.bent at gmail.com wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > On Wed, 4 Aug 2021 at 20:52, John Floren john at jfloren.net wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Having just been given a Depraz mouse, I thought it would be fun to get it working on my modern computer. Since the DE9 connector is male rather than female as you usually see with serial mice, and given its age, I speculate that it might have a custom protocol; in any rate, plugging it into a USB-serial converter and and firing up picocom has given me nothing.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Does anyone have a copy of a manual for it, or more information on how to interface with it? If I knew how it was wired and what the protocol looked like, I expect I could make an adapter pretty trivially using a microcontroller.
> > > > >
> > > > > This might be of some help?
> > > > >
> > > > > https://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum/technical-support/vintage-computer-hardware/74403-whitechapel-mg-1-depraz-mouse-grey-pinout#post904391
> > > > >
> > > > > -Henry
> > > >
> > > > This looks great, thank you!
> > > >
> > > > john


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