RobDos wrote on 2021-11-17, 01:59:

This far exceeds my knowledge but I'm wondering how difficult would it be to process USB mouse data then output that on a RS232 port using a raspberry PI as a host.

Doing a bit of research seems like someone else already did it, has any one tried this? Obviously it's getting harder and harder to find a RS232 mouse and I got to be honest, there is nothing about me that feels nostalgic for a mouse ball.

CalamityLime from right here on Vogons has done it: USB to Serial Mouse using the Pi Pico!
If you do PS/2 instead of USB, Rio444 has an ISA card so no power adapters needed: Another PS/2 Mouse ISA (ISA8) card adapter
If more mechanically inclined, there is also a hack to add a PS/2 mouse port to many 386/486 boards if the keyboard controller supports it.

Neat, I may look at the ISA card because I just think that's just plain sexyer.

The link I put appears to work with a generic USB RS232 and the PI's built in USB ports, not pretty by any means but I have PI's lying around.

The PiPico looks really cool, thanks for the tips!

There are at least 3 USB to Serial Projects using Pico Pi now, but none is yet working fine with my KVM Switch 😒