Serial Mice and PS/2 to Serial Questions \ VOGONS

Serial Mice and PS/2 to Serial Questions

Topic actions

Post a reply

First post, by andreja6

Posted on 2017-12-09, 00:05

andreja6 Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 129
Joined: 2017-10-03, 07:56

So I have an old PC on which I'm trying to get a mouse in DOS on.
It works fine on windows, but only via USB.

So I had a few old PS/2 mice lying around, so I decided to try getting a PS/2 to Serial adapter because the PS/2 ports in the PC exploded (Such fun)
First i tried out my HP MS-48 Ball Mouse using CTMouse and Mouse.com through the serial.
Didn't work.
Then i tried some random Made In China "Super Brother" Model MO-028 optical mouse from 2008 (No i did not expect this to work)
But something strange happened
The mouse actually lit up as if it was going to work?
Although I never got any farther, Loading CTMouse just fails to find a driver and loading Mouse.com loads a driver but then the mouse immediately shuts off.
To be fair, I'm not sure the mouse even works right...

Is it possible that a PS/2 optical mouse would actually work on a serial port?
Also, is it possible to connect a windows 7 via serial, and pass the window's 7's mouse through to the DOS PC using the serial port?

Reply 1 of 3, by cyclone3d

Posted on 2017-12-09, 00:51

cyclone3d Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 7905
Joined: 2015-04-08, 06:06
Location: Huntsville, AL USA

Is there an option in your BIOS for "legacy support" in regards to the USB ports? If so, turning that on should get you going.

If not, you will need to load a USB DOS driver before CTMouse will be able to see it.

See here for some help with that.
http://bretjohnson.us/

Also, some really old PS/2 mice will work with a serial adapter. The catch is, is that they must specifically support the serial port.

You can always build yourself an active PS/2 to serial adapter:
https://hackaday.io/project/27575-ps2-to-rs23 … mouse-converter

Or buy one for a pretty penny:
http://www.vetra.com/327text.html

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 2 of 3, by Koltoroc

Posted on 2017-12-09, 01:30

Koltoroc Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 381
Joined: 2016-10-07, 23:21

Not all PS/2 mice work on serial ports. They need to support both the PS/2 and serial protocol and the physical adapters are not standardized .

Modern optical mice can not support the serial port because they need additional power and the serial port does not provide any power. To use any modern PS/2 mouse on a serial port you need an active converter.