Old optical mice didnt like fast movements.

There is the Cherry M-5400. It is cheap, comes in retro friendly colours and includes a USB to PS2 adapter.
For conversion to serial I use this:
Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Methinks you need to adjust the acceleration settings down a notch. Modern windows has had that hidden for ages now, default is about equivalent to 2 on older stuff. However, you will also be more used to higher DPI mice, and the tracking speed to trigger acceleration amplification might be different.... couldn't get native tracking speed up too fast on a ball mouse or the ball would skip, hence why acceleration was an option in the first place I guess.

Yeah the driver has a big role in determining cursor behavior. To me GMOUSE.COM is golden, so is Micorosoft's MOUSE.COM as long as you follow it up with a speed profile (forgot which one I use). I tried both versions of CTMOUSE and I couldn't stand it. It was fighting my precision with all it got, no matter what parameters I use. I never used it since...

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-08-12, 12:56:

Old optical mice didnt like fast movements.

I do not believe this is the case because I also use the mice on a Windows XP system and they work great but in this case they are either connected with PS2 or USB directly.

Is there a good manual out there which shows how to configure the speed profiles with the GMOUSE.COM or MOUSE.COM from Microsoft? I have never done that before because this is the first time I am encountering it.

mombarak wrote on 2024-08-12, 11:20:

What are your plans to ensure you have a good working mouse connected to your retro hardware?

My long term planning is to use ATX with PS2. I have three S7 boards, and they do all provide PS2 for Pentium CPUs.

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but Phil recently released a video about using a modern USB mouse on a retro PC via PicoGUS.

mombarak wrote on 2024-08-12, 19:00:

Is there a good manual out there which shows how to configure the speed profiles with the GMOUSE.COM or MOUSE.COM from Microsoft? I have never done that before because this is the first time I am encountering it.

GMOUSE.COM doesn't have speed profiles. It just works(tm).

MOUSE.COM is installed with a few other utilities when using the original Microsoft Mouse installation disk. IIRC during installation it asks you about what profile to use and will put the proper commands in Autoexec.bat. Sorry I haven't run my retro builds in a while so I don't know the command by heart. But it's a separate executable you run after MOUSE.COM and will take the speed profile you choose and make it the active one.

I have seen it done as a series of switches when loading the driver. When you got a setup diskette with the mouse, there was usually a nifty menu installer that asked you what you wanted to set and it stuck the right parameters in the config files for you.

mombarak wrote on 2024-08-12, 18:58:

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-08-12, 12:56:

Old optical mice didnt like fast movements.

I do not believe this is the case because I also use the mice on a Windows XP system and they work great but in this case they are either connected with PS2 or USB directly.

Then we are talking about different magnitude of movement. MS Optical starts being erratic when moved _very rapidly_. Sounds like you have problem with normal movement speed? Might be losing/missing reports over slow serial link.
Standard serial mouse drivers use something like 1200 or 2400 bps. https://roborooter.com/post/serial-mice/ says
" maximum tracking rate for a Microsoft mouse is 40 reports/second * 127 counts per report, in other words, 5080 counts per second. The most common range for mice is is 100 to 400 CPI (counts per inch) but can be up to 1000 CPI. A 100CPI mouse can discriminate motion up to 50.8 inches/second while a 400 CPI mouse can only discriminate motion up to 12.7 inches/second."
try forcing higher serial speed PS2 or Serial mouse for Pentium build? Suggestions?

Thanks for the responses. I will try it out and let you know.

Maybe a different option: I have struggled with various adapters, but never found one I truly like. The Serdaco PS2TOSERIAL is probably the best of the lot, but it sticks out multiple cm behind the case it's in and is very vulnerable to getting bumped out. I would far prefer an internal option that connects to a serial header in the case and offers a PS/2 port either on a backplate or on a spare DE9 or DB25 plate.

But... I found something better, in particular because I have multiple XT/AT systems needing serial mice: a Startech StarView Server Sharer Plus KVM switch.

This one is special as it dates to the time when PS/2 was supplanting serial, so it has both AT+serial and 2x PS/2 for every system. And it has a built-in serial to PS/2 conversion so you can hook all the old systems to it with serial cables, then use a single PS/2 mouse (or in my case: Microsoft Trackball Explorer trackball) to operate them all. Not only do the serial cables not stick out so far behind the cases, they can be screwed into DE9/DB25 ports so don't get bumped off. And I only need one converting device, not four. Could be worth considering.

dionb wrote on 2024-08-14, 11:19:

Maybe a different option: I have struggled with various adapters, but never found one I truly like. The Serdaco PS2TOSERIAL is probably the best of the lot, but it sticks out multiple cm behind the case it's in and is very vulnerable to getting bumped out. I would far prefer an internal option that connects to a serial header in the case and offers a PS/2 port either on a backplate or on a spare DE9 or DB25 plate.

But... I found something better, in particular because I have multiple XT/AT systems needing serial mice: a Startech StarView Server Sharer Plus KVM switch.

This one is special as it dates to the time when PS/2 was supplanting serial, so it has both AT+serial and 2x PS/2 for every system. And it has a built-in serial to PS/2 conversion so you can hook all the old systems to it with serial cables, then use a single PS/2 mouse (or in my case: Microsoft Trackball Explorer trackball) to operate them all. Not only do the serial cables not stick out so far behind the cases, they can be screwed into DE9/DB25 ports so don't get bumped off. And I only need one converting device, not four. Could be worth considering.

Thanks for this input. I started searching for it but found a lot of USB or PS2 only. Do you have a product number or serial number that spits out the exact model in search engines?
This sounds like a cool alternative!

Or you can try making this USB-serial-mouse-adapter. After testing, USB wired and wireless mice are compatible. Set it to 19200bps and use the CTMOUSE Hack driver to get the same smooth movement as a PS2 mouse.

The difficulty and cost of making it are very low, and only a Pi Pico and a few components are needed.

LimeProgramming/USB-serial-mouse-adapter https://github.com/LimeProgramming/USB-serial … apter/tree/main

mombarak wrote on 2024-08-15, 07:34:

[...]

Thanks for this input. I started searching for it but found a lot of USB or PS2 only. Do you have a product number or serial number that spits out the exact model in search engines?
This sounds like a cool alternative!

This should do the trick: SV421PLUS

For anyone who is interested, I have some first results. It seems Warcraft 2 and Cannon Fodder have some issues with the standard mouse driver from MS DOS 6.22. The imprecise-ness is visible in these games while others seem to work fine. The mouse, with the same driver, is relatively precise in Norton Commander 4.0 and Simon the Sorcerer 1.

After installing "MS Mousedriver V7.04 for DOS, needs 17K, supports mouse pointer acceleration" from https://www.uwe-sieber.de/util_e.html, the mouse was much more precise in Warcraft 2 and Cannon Fodder and worked fine for the other games as well. I never noticed this behavior on my old 486SX25 when I used it in 1994 but this might be blurred by the years. Also the 486SX25 from Siemens Nixdorf had PS2 onboard which also might worked different/better.

But its interesting to see that this is not caused by the mouse/hardware but more by what the driver makes of it. I will test CTmouse too.