Introducing prankeapple, a PS/2 to ADB converter for the Apple IIgs

[fx <sfxman@gmail.com>]

Hi folks. A while ago, I found myself getting annoyed by cleaning mouse rollers, and decided to do something about it. I looked for ADB optical mice, but they were rare as hens' teeth. I looked for a PS/2 to ADB converter, which turned out to exist, but the reviews said that they didn't work properly with the IIgs - they used the second version of the ADB protocol and jumped around a lot.

So, I decided to make my own. Having an Arduino handy, and knowing that there already was code to read from a PS/2 mouse on Arduino, it seemed like the obvious choice.

After only a few days of hacking I have a working prototype, the prankeapple*. You can get the code and read the docs at http://code.google.com/p/prankeapple

Be warned that this is still pre-alpha quality code and I can't guarantee that it won't light your IIgs on fire. But if you are an adventurous early adopter and would like an optical mouse on your IIgs, please try it out! It will improve your Arkanoid score by 1000%.

*pranks not yet implemented, but it would be the matter of a few minutes' work to make it randomly move the mouse when a certain unused input on the Arduino is pulled high.