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First post, by rootifera

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Hello everyone,

I'm having an issue installing a serial mouse on MSDOS 6.22.

The issue is I can't get my mouse (I have 3 different serial mice) to communicate with the computer. I have 2 com ports on the motherboard and I have a Moschip MCS9835 PCI serial card, total 4 ports. I tested all the mice I have on each port with cutemouse's "comtest" and it doesn't report any "attached" device.

I also have a serial u.s. robotics modem, I can get that work just fine on any of those 4 ports. So I'm quite sure the ports are working (at least for the modem).

Can someone please guide me on that subject? Maybe there's a BIOS setting I missed, maybe something needs to be changed etc? Please let me know if you need any further details about the hardware/software.

Thank you!
Rooti

Reply 1 of 17, by Cyberdyne

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I assume that those mice work on other computers. And the build if your cutemose has worked in other computers.
Try Microsoft Mouse driver, try Logitech Mouse driver.
1. Remove Serial Card and put a mouse in motherboard COM1 try again.
2. Put another one in COM2
3.Add serial card, put another one in there.
4. And finally add modem, and look that it works still.

BIOS has no special setting for COM mice, only COM ports.

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

Reply 2 of 17, by rootifera

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Cyberdyne wrote on 2020-11-11, 12:58:
I assume that those mice work on other computers. And the build if your cutemose has worked in other computers. Try Microsoft Mo […]
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I assume that those mice work on other computers. And the build if your cutemose has worked in other computers.
Try Microsoft Mouse driver, try Logitech Mouse driver.
1. Remove Serial Card and put a mouse in motherboard COM1 try again.
2. Put another one in COM2
3.Add serial card, put another one in there.
4. And finally add modem, and look that it works still.

BIOS has no special setting for COM mice, only COM ports.

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. I will try with "Logitech DOS Mouse Driver Version 7.3" now. I'm also looking for a suitable Microsoft Mouse Driver for DOS. I will let you know about the results.

Reply 4 of 17, by rootifera

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chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-11-11, 13:46:

Do the mice work on other computers?

yes I believe they do, at least one of them I used it for a while with a different computer. I don't have another (old) computer ready to test at the moment but I used a usb-to-serial adapter on this computer (which is a new one with no serial ports) and tested them with putty. I can see data appearing as I move the mouse or click the buttons so I have a good feeling the mice are OK.

If you have another option for testing the mouse I'm happy to do that too.

Reply 6 of 17, by rootifera

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chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-11-11, 14:51:

If you can see data from them when moving and clicking then odds are they are fine and it's just a software issue with dos

yes I agree. I tried installing Microsoft Mouse 7.0 drivers, now it hangs at boot after "HIMEM is testing extended memory... done" message. I think I'll go grab another motherboard and setup a new DOS PC. All I wanted to do was playing Monkey Island 😀

Reply 7 of 17, by Jorpho

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rootifera wrote on 2020-11-11, 15:01:

I tried installing Microsoft Mouse 7.0 drivers, now it hangs at boot after "HIMEM is testing extended memory... done" message.

What if you load the driver manually on the command line instead of in your autoexec.bat?

All I wanted to do was playing Monkey Island 😀

You are aware that game runs effortlessly in ScummVM, right?

Reply 8 of 17, by rootifera

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Jorpho wrote on 2020-11-11, 17:03:
What if you load the driver manually on the command line instead of in your autoexec.bat? […]
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rootifera wrote on 2020-11-11, 15:01:

I tried installing Microsoft Mouse 7.0 drivers, now it hangs at boot after "HIMEM is testing extended memory... done" message.

What if you load the driver manually on the command line instead of in your autoexec.bat?

All I wanted to do was playing Monkey Island 😀

You are aware that game runs effortlessly in ScummVM, right?

Hello,

Both occasions it just hangs. Probably I'm missing a step somewhere. I'll setup a different PC tomorrow and test the mice I have and see what happens.

And yes I'm aware that the game can be run in ScummVM, however I enjoy tinkering old hardware as much as I enjoy playing the game. I understand you offer that because I said "all I wanted to do was playing Monkey Island", so thank you for offering a differnt solution 😀

Rooti

Reply 11 of 17, by Cyberdyne

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If HIMEM hangs then you may have memory errors or some other system stability issues. What motherboard or system do you use?

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

Reply 12 of 17, by my03

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chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-11-12, 13:43:

He mentioned using cute mouse in the first post

You're right, i missed that part.

But i recently started to use ctmouse myself (on my ps/2 30-286) due to its smaller footprint and i actually had issues with it not being recognized by the machine from the start (running the mouse test did not work at all since it did not show any mouse movement/clicks, etc). It took me some 4-5 retries for it to eventually come to life oddly enough (using the ps/2 mouse connected to the mouse port).

Reply 13 of 17, by rootifera

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Hello everyone,

Thank you for all the messages and opinions. Now I have a new setup.

MB: TMC AI5VG+
CPU: AMD K5-PR100
RAM: 2x16MB EDO

Unfortunately the result is the same. None of the mice getting recognised. I installed Win98 too, still no mouse. I think, somehow, all the serial mice I have failed last few months as they are sitting in one of the drawers. I can't think of anything else. I tested the new PC setup serial ports with US Robotics modem and modem works correctly on each port (including the PCI cards ports).

So in this case I'm happy to accept this is not a DOS issue but definitely a hardware issue. I'm still slightly confused, I had a reading through USB-to-Serial with the mice, so they seem to be working but when I attach them to old PC's nothing happens.

Now I'll go ahead and order a different serial mouse on ebay and see what happens. I will give you updates as soon as I test it.

Thanks!
Rooti

Reply 14 of 17, by rootifera

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Hello again,

Small addition. At the moment I'm using one of the serial mice on this computer, attached through usb-serial adapter. I didn't think Win10 can still work a serial mouse but it certainly does. The mouse works just fine, I didn't test the others but at least one of the mice is alive.

However that doesn't resolve the issue. I still have no idea why both retroPC's not picking the mice up when I attach it...

All gets more and more interesting... hmmmm

Reply 15 of 17, by rootifera

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Hello,

Finally some good news. I managed to get it working.

I installed Win98 to see if I can use some tools & drivers to troubleshoot the issue. Initially it didn't work and Win98 wasn't booting while mouse was plugged in. Then I noticed I have an "unknown device" in the device manager named "Logitech Serial Mouse". Following that I downloaded and installed Logitech mouse driver for Win98. Only at COM4 finally it worked. I don't know why COM4. This is one of the the ports on the PCI card.

After that I reinstalled DOS6.22 and installed Logitech driver. After tinkering with the mousedrv.ini file and changing IRQ/Address I finally made it work.

If anyone needs any detailed information, I'm happy to share.

Thank you for all your help.
Rooti

Reply 17 of 17, by Caluser2000

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Well done.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉