Re: Apple //c Mouse: Do I need a driver? Is Mac Plus mouse compatible?

[zcaa1122@rpool8.rus.uni-stuttgart.de (Wulf Hofbauer)]

In article <CBo3xu.Cus@harlequin.com> tim@harlequin.com (Tim McNerney) writes:
>Then I heard from someone at Apple and someone at a used equipment broker
>that the Mac Plus mouse *does* work on the //c.  The guy at Apple added
>that there is some sort of mouse driver that makes it work.
>
>Can someone verify this?
>Does anyone know where I can find the mouse driver?  
>Is this is all I need?

The Mac+ mouse should work with the //c. All driver code necessary is in the
//c ROMs, so you normally don't need a driver. However, applications
must of course support mouse input.

For applications not supporting a mouse, there is a hook built into the
//c ROMs: if the application supports paddles/joystick input AND uses
the standard ROM routines for that, the mouse can be made to emulate
a pair of paddles or a joystick. To activate this hook, enter (from BASIC)

:PR#4:?chr$(1);:PR#0

(Assuming the mouse firmware is in slot 4, this is the case for the original
and UniDisk 3.5 ROM versions).

As long as you don't reset the machine (or send a chr$(0) to slot 4),
the paddle routines will return a mouse position.

There's however a caveat: the paddles/joystick have two buttons, the
mouse only one. Also, the mouse button uses a different memory address than
the joystick/paddle buttons. So you often can't use the mouse button.

You might compensate for this by using the "Apple" buttons on the keyboard -
they are equivalent to the joystick/mouse buttons.

Btw, you can convert almost any mouse to work with the //c - just throw out
all the electronics and replace it by a few Schmidt-triggers... this may
often be much cheaper than an original Apple mouse.

- Wulf Hofbauer

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