Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article , dan
wrote:


Devonshire wrote:

On the day of Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:09:38 -0800...
dan
typed these letters:





Funny, I've been using optical mice for at least 15 years... Nice to
know they were invented only 5 or so years ago! I was ahead of my time
- that, and my steam-powered computer : )

Dan


An optical mouse in 1991? You sure about that? Was it IBM compatable?
I never seen such a thing. You wouldn't happen to still have that
mouse would you? I'd like to see it. I have a growing collection of
vintage computer stuff and look regularly at salvage stores to see
what old goodies I can find. I rarely find an optical mouse. Most
of the ones I do find are USB which makes them a bit newer than 1991
for sure. Around 1991 I was a bit behind the times with my 386sx
16Mhz machine. It came with a ball mouse. I don't recall even using
a mouse much back then. I was still running DOS and most of the stuff
I did either did not support a mouse, or hot keys were a much faster
way to maneuver.

Devonshire


Bought my Mac SE/30 in 1986 or 7 (1 MB RAM, expanded to 8, 20 MB HD, 16
MHz 68030 processor). Came with ball mouse. Updated to optical mouse
1990 or so. Original optical mice came with a special pad, with bicolor
grid markings under a transparent coating.

So, yeah, 15 years. Still have it, and the Mac, still functions, last
used it during my elementary student teaching in 1998! I think the
mouse was SCSI (round plug, 4 pins in a V, a rectangular guide inside,
two indentations ~90* apart).


Not SCSI, which was for disks, tapes, and scanners, and ran circles
around IDE and ATP.

It was ADB (Apple Desktop Bus), the intellectual ancestor of USB.


Joe Gwinn

I must be getting old... I knew that at one time!

Dan