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Windows 3.11 and the mouse

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First post, by Planet-Dune

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I installed Dos 6.22 and Win 3.11 yesterday and to my surprise my USB mouse works without installing any driver or configuring ports etc... However, it only works in Win 3.11. In DOS mode it does not. I have no idea why it "works out of the box" as the last time I used a mouse I had to install the CTMouse driver and set the correct properties in the COM port... and that was a PS/2 mouse instead of a modern USB.

Anyone know why it works just like that and if it is possible to make it also work in DOS?

Reply 1 of 4, by derSammler

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Legacy USB support in BIOS makes the mouse look like a ps/2 mouse to the OS. Windows comes with mouse drivers by default, so it will work there. For DOS, you always need to load a mouse driver like ctmouse.

Reply 2 of 4, by Planet-Dune

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derSammler wrote on 2020-02-07, 18:53:

Legacy USB support in BIOS makes the mouse look like a ps/2 mouse to the OS. Windows comes with mouse drivers by default, so it will work there. For DOS, you always need to load a mouse driver.

Interesting, I take it is a lost cause to find a DOS mouse driver for a modern USB mouse. Unless something generic was released?

EDIT: I will try CTMouse and see how it goes.. in the end if the ancient Win driver works, an ancient dos driver could as well...

Reply 4 of 4, by Planet-Dune

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derSammler wrote on 2020-02-07, 18:58:

ctmouse will work, since the system will see a ps/2 mouse, not an USB one (unless you disable Legacy USB support in BIOS, which you probably not going to do 😉).

It worked just fine, didn't know it was that easy to use a USB mouse in DOS...

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