Is there a specific reason you want to use the Logitech driver? I ditched most mouse drivers years ago as most of them eat up an insane amount of RAM.

Primarily I just wanted to check that a common, period mouse driver works with the device I'm using, but I'm also intrigued (or maybe also concerned) by it not working in such an odd way - detecting but not functioning. My quandary is with whether there's a problem with the system I'm trying it on, the driver itself, or the device I'm using.

By the way, I found a MouseWare 9.42 CD image on archive.org that contains the DOS driver - in fact, two copies: one in a 'DOS' subdirectory that reports as driver version 8.50, and one in a 'WIN31X' subdirectory that reports as driver version 8.32. 😕 Neither work. And in fact I have found that these are no newer than on the MouseWare 8.60 disc, which amusingly also contains both versions - v8.50 in the root, v8.32 in 'WIN31X' folder. I also realise I had been using the newest v8.50 all along, because I was trying the one from the root directory.

Nothing newer on archive.org contained a DOS driver, so it appears this 9.42 MouseWare release was the very last to contain Logitech DOS mouse driver.

As far as I know all the old serial logitech mice had to use their own logitech mouse driver.
The normal microsoft mouse drivers didn't work with them.
It is also the reason I remember not wanting a logitech mouse at the time, needing the logitech driver is annoying.
Something about the logitech mice was different from the mainstream mice. It's probably documented somewhere on the internet.

So you trying to use the logitech mouse driver on something that mostly emulates a "normal" microsoft compatible serial mice will not work, ever,
unless there is a way to convince the driver to use a different method to have the mouse talk to it.

weedeewee wrote on 2026-01-21, 18:20:

As far as I know all the old serial logitech mice had to use their own logitech mouse driver.
The normal microsoft mouse drivers didn't work with them.

That's not true. The original C7/R7 Logitech serial mice (the square, angular models) did support the Microsoft protocol. In fact they supported several, and were run-time configurable via serial commands or by opening up the mouse and switching jumper links to permanently set the default mode. The whole reason why they would have done that is for compatibility with existing software that only spoke protocols of other pointing devices. In fact, it seems they didn't even have their own protocol, and by default used the 5-byte Mouse Systems protocol. (Source: Logimouse C7 Technical Reference Manual). I believe the following Series 9 (a.k.a. C9) were the same.

As far as I can tell, the later MouseMan series implemented and used by default the 4-byte 'M3' extension to the Microsoft protocol, but possibly also still supported other protocols via serial configuration commands. Haven't been able to confirm the latter, though. (Source: SCO Unix Support Archive: Differences between the Logitech Mouseman and C7/C9 Serial Mouse?)

As you can see, I have already done a lot of research into how Logitech mice are supposed to work. 😜

weedeewee wrote on 2026-01-21, 18:20:

So you trying to use the logitech mouse driver on something that mostly emulates a "normal" microsoft compatible serial mice will not work, ever,
unless there is a way to convince the driver to use a different method to have the mouse talk to it.

The Logitech driver does work with Microsoft-compatible mice, as evidenced by the fact I have it working within an 86Box VM configured for a Microsoft serial mouse.

I would expect that since every version of mouseware acts the same, but MS mouse and cutemouse works fine that there is a compatibility issue between the serial mouse emulator and the mouseware driver. It may be one of those things where for example the timing on commands and responses are on the opposite ends of tolerance.

HwAoRrDk wrote on 2026-01-22, 01:11:

The Logitech driver does work with Microsoft-compatible mice, as evidenced by the fact I have it working within an 86Box VM configured for a Microsoft serial mouse.

It works indeed with all non Logitech mouses that I tested. I like especially the later versions of Logitech MouseWare with the cloaking option. Uses only 1Kb conventional memory.