First post, by athlon-power
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I have just come to a very weird, but helpful realization; my other PS/2 mice are terrible compared to this USB mouse I got yesterday at my local flea market. I decided to get it at the same time as I got that external SCSI backup drive, and when I decided to try it today, I realized that for some reason, this mouse completely destroys the period-accurate PS/2 mice I've been using with my 1999 rig for a while.
Every single PS/2 mouse I have (yes, I have cleaned all three points of input that the ball makes with the mouse, as well as the ball itself, with all of the prior mice) seems to have this weird "lag" issue in games- it is akin to input lag, but is also reminiscent of lower FPS, even though the FPS is technically the same. I have tried the following PS/2 mice, and this issue has never gone away, until now, with this USB mouse, of all things:
A Microsoft 1.1 Mouse
A Microsoft 1.3 Mouse
A Logitech 3-button (no scroll wheel) Mouse
A knockoff mouse with a scroll button, instead of a scroll wheel
All of these mice have had that lag issue, with two different motherboards. When I rebooted the PC with the USB mouse plugged in after removing the PS/2 mouse, the difference was night and day. Even the cursor input was noticeably faster and smoother. We are not talking about a laser mouse, either: all of these mice are ball mice, including the USB one. I could understand if this was a laser/optical mouse, but it's a ball mouse, like all the others. The only difference is that it's USB. It also seems to be quite old as well, considering that it does not have a scroll wheel. I originally bought this mouse just because I knew it was older, and it was unique because unlike any other mice I have, it is clear. I had no idea I would see this much of an improvement in Windows, let alone in games. I have made previous posts about less-than-satisfactory performance in games, specifically Half-Life. I am very convinced that this was because of that "laggy" mouse problem that all of my PS/2 mice encountered. Here are some photos of the new mouse in question, for anybody that's interested in seeing it:
I wouldn't be surprised if this post comes off as rushed. I am just excited to actually see what the performance of this machine is really like, and I could already tell a massive difference, even when testing in GLQuake. I thought the game ran smoothly with the PS/2 mice, but I had no idea how laggy it actually was compared to now. I am unsure of what causes this issue- for anybody that might want to look a little into this, I'm using the Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard. Before I was using a Gateway Tabor III, with the same Intel 440 chipset, but I don't know if it was the LX or BX variant. I must reiterate that all of these mice were cleaned with the same method: rubbing alcohol and paper towels. I always make sure any ball mice I use are clean before I use them. I think a lot of people attribute bad memories to ball mice, simply because they remember using the mice that were clogged up messes that resulted after nobody took the time to clean them.
Where am I?
