Re: a USB for the Apple II smoke test

["Sean Fahey" <a2fan@hotmail.com>]

"Scott Alfter" <salfter@salfter.diespammersdie.dyndns.org> wrote in message
news:42e9457e$0$10999$9a6e19ea@news.newshosting.com...

> IIRC, there was a mouse card for the II that took a serial (as in RS-232)
> mouse and got it working in the same manner as the Apple mouse card (so
that
> existing software would work).  A couple minutes' googling turned up this:
>
>     The mouse must be a Microsoft or compatible mouse.
>

I don't think it's relevant to how Bart got his results.

I have a couple of these mice/cards in storage. They are Apple Mouse
compatible cards that adapt PC serial mice to work as Apple mice. No special
driver required, any software that reads an Apple Mouse Card will work with
it. The card itself isn't a serial card per se like a true super serial
card. Sure - someone could write a driver to use a SSC as a mouse controller
but what's the point? I think existing 8 bit software would ignore it unless
their mouse routines were intercepted by a driver for translation by a shim
application or rewritten completely to use the SSC.

I've never plugged an Apple Mouse Card into a GS... for obvious reasons,
never had the need to. So I can't state what GS/OS would do. I hypothesize
it would do nothing, except attempt to read the ADB mouse. A mouse card in a
GS would only become useful when booting 8 bit (assuming ProDOS) apps that
support mice. ProDOS 16 apps would use ADB mice.