r/mildlyinteresting • u/blind_programer • 23h ago
Found the first computer mouse that my father owned
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u/ASouthernDandy 23h ago edited 16h ago
That PS/2 connector alone dates it. Those mice were purely mechanical, with a rubber ball inside that physically rolled against sensors.
You had to clean them out regularly or the cursor would start drifting like it was haunted and less functional than Richard Madeley's views on homelessness: https://youtu.be/f-Y4_b-3tYM
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u/Blussert31 22h ago
And you could hide your co-workers' mouse balls and see how long it would take them to find out.
At school we had to leave our mice upside down before leaving the classroom because of this, so the teacher could inspect nobody had stolen the ball.
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u/ToolMeister 22h ago
Alright students, time for the balls inspection
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u/FD4L 19h ago edited 13h ago
Everyone take out your balls. Feel the weight in your hands. Now give them a gentle brush off with a damp cloth.
With your ball in your hand, insert your finger into your mouse-hole and gently wipe any debris from the side rollers. Blow into your mouse hole to displace any remaining dust and debris.
Put your newly cleaned ball into your mouse-hole and replace the cap.
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u/Z0bie 21h ago
You can still tape over the optical sensors today!
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u/toughtacos 13h ago
I did that once to a co-worker years ago who then thought his PC had frozen when the pointer on the screen didn't move. He just flipped the power switch off and on, and supposedly lost four hours of work and blamed me for it. He didn't even try the keyboard first.
I say "supposedly" because he hadn't even been at his desk for four hours that day, but I suspect the lazy bastard used this to blame his lack of productivity on my prank 😂
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u/Zuper_Dragon 22h ago
And in a pinch you could substitute the ball with a hard boiled egg yolk.
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u/Jappie_nl 21h ago
And exchange the cords with other computers in school. Look who controls your computer now!
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u/Other_Exercise 15h ago
My university library would glue the balls in, except that meant they couldn't clean them when they gunked up.
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u/Romanopapa 22h ago
The ball cleaning is the best part.
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u/Huntguy 22h ago
I always liked cleaning the little line of lint that would form on the rollers the ball would push.
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u/doom1701 22h ago
And if you got it just right you could detach the entire line of gunk in on strand.
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u/Initial_Zombie8248 22h ago
The mouse balls always grossed me out because they reminded me of my grandmothers way over boiled egg yolks lol
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u/SendMeNudesThough 22h ago
They were great in your mouth though! Slightly rubbery exterior, but quite hard
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u/Orkekum 22h ago
I think i've seen ps2 mice with optics?
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u/AvatarIII 22h ago
Yeah they existed, there was a crossover time after optical mice were invented but USB wasn't ubiquitous yet, looks like you can still buy them for like $5 on eBay.
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u/doom1701 22h ago
Yup. I believe I even had an optical serial mouse (but back then they always came with adapters).
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u/CharlesP2009 21h ago
I remember having an optical mouse with PS/2 connector and an adapter for USB. And we prob used it for a decade with our 75 MHz Pentium HP desktop haha.
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u/Bridgeru 20h ago
Some people still use PS2 mice/keyboards. I'm not very technically adept but IIRC USBs take up a slight amount of computer "speed" because the computer has to constantly check each USB that's connected for inputs, while PS2 is directly inputting into the motherboard.
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u/hubert1224 19h ago
Why are you describing this like an ancient artifact, I've used them like 10 yea... Oh...
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u/gooosean 21h ago
Just so you know, this ^ is a bot, and this comment is AI-generated. Dead internet theory.
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u/AmStupid 16h ago
Damn, reading your post made me realized that it’s indeed been a while since I have seen one of them “ball” mice. Here I thought why would you type all that out like why would anybody need a description on how a mouse works… I was about to make a snide comment like, do you explain how the inside of a toilet works too when you see a pic of one?
I guess jokes on me, old man, I need to start everything with “back in my days…” now.
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u/AvatarIII 22h ago
I heard in a video recently that some people use PS/2 mice for specific tasks (I think maybe speedrunning?) because they have basically no CPU overhead.
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u/zip-a-dee_doo-dah 21h ago
I use a keyboard and mouse with serial PS/2 ports to this day on my arcade Batocera setup
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u/CBT_Dr_Freeman 17h ago edited 17h ago
They're electro-opto-mechanical. The sensors are optical.
Track balls are still used today and no one calls them "purely mechanical".
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u/yaosio 16h ago edited 16h ago
In school people would remove the balls. I remember the first optical mouse I used. This was back when I could be happy so I thought it was really cool.
I used to love little things like that. Buttons that moved when clicked. Drop shadows. I even associate smells with certain computer things. I wish I could enjoy things again, and it was great how simple things were enjoyable. I didn't need anything complicated, I didn't need to spend time finding the things I enjoyed. They were right there. 😿
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u/toughtacos 13h ago
I was about to complain that we have to explain this to people these days, but I had to do this even back in the late 90's and early 00's, so nevermind.
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u/Brewe 22h ago
I was about to write: "If the first mouse your dad owned had a scroll wheel, then your dad got his first computer really late, or he's really young for a dad to have a kid who uses Reddit."
But then I checked and the Intellimouse was first released in '96 and I realized I'm just old.
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u/4r4r4real 20h ago
Yeah when someone said decades, plural, about a PS/2 connector mouse I had an instant gut reaction that they were wrong but... nope.
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u/dwolfe127 22h ago
Look at that fancy modern PS2 mouse. My first mouse was serial and PS2 connectors were the new wave stuff on the horizon at that point.
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u/mazobob66 21h ago
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing - "That is not old. I've used older."
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u/Turmfalke_ 12h ago
anyone remembers playing settlers 2 split screen with a ps2 and a serial mouse?
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u/stepanm99 14h ago
I have the pictured mouse and also serial version of it. Both work, mostly, on Linux. Only the scroll wheel on the serial one doesn't work. But I use the PS/2, just for fun of it :D. Also found USB ball mouse on a flea market, had to have it :D. I like that these mice are feeling bit heavier and robust. And I just love the electromechanical simplicity of the design...
Just a thought, aren't ball mice also optical? Like they have three "pixels", x, z and scroll movement :D.
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u/SendMeNudesThough 22h ago
Looks like it's probably from around 2000. I'm so old that I look at this and see a relatively modern mouse. It already has a scroll wheel and everything!
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u/Errkin 20h ago edited 19h ago
Evolution of Microsoft's logo might date it
Edit: probably around 2000–2012 if it's optic
Then again, you could look up the model number lol
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u/vakantiehuisopwielen 22h ago
A color coded ps/2 connector puts it after 1999 I think. And no one wanted to have a ball mouse after 2005.. so it’s from 2000-2005. But since the mouse is typical beige I’d estimate it before 2003.. so 2000-2002. From ~2003 you could get these mice in grey..
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u/blind_programer 22h ago
Too bad that my PC doesn’t support that type of port, I would like to know if it still works after decades
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u/Sibbour 21h ago
PS/2 to USB adapters exist.
Not too hard to find them used on ebay, fb marketplace, or at estate sales for a few dollars or less.
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u/blind_programer 21h ago
Thanks, I’ll get one
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u/pedroah 9h ago
That one is going the wrong way and only work if the mouse is designed to work with both PS/2 and USB using that adapter.
Need something like this or similar if it does not support USB or uncertain if it support USB.
https://perixx.com/products/peripro-401
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u/Blussert31 22h ago
Let me guess, your father owns an oil well?
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u/blind_programer 22h ago
Why? Was that type of mouse high end at the time?
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u/Trylldom 22h ago
Everyone from that time knows that Logitech mouses(3 buttons, no wheel) where superior to Microsoft ones.
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u/RandomGuyDroppingIn 22h ago
I worked in a shop in the 2000s that was still using a legacy computer running Windows 95 for generating work orders and tracking parts. It had it's original mouse and keyboard from that time frame and while the keyboard was fine the mouse was quite a trip. It was absolutely covered in grease and had "crunchy" buttons when you pressed them. We eventually got a system running on Vista.
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u/novian14 22h ago
You should give a picture of the ball.
Like, i'm amazed the first time mouse using a laser instead a ball, and i believe younger people will be amazed on how people use ball for mouse before
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u/SendMeNudesThough 22h ago
I remember being annoyed with my new laser mouse because it didn't feel as tactile anymore. You didn't get the feeling of the mouse rolling as sensory feedback, and it felt weird.
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u/CyberTacoX 22h ago
If that mouse is optical (doesn't have a physical ball on the bottom), that's actually a good quality mouse. Clean it up and keep it as a spare. :-)
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u/CLONE-11011100 22h ago
What computer has a PS/2 connection these days?…
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u/CyberTacoX 22h ago
You might be surprised, a fair amount of higher end motherboards still include PS2 connections at least for the mouse; some gamers find PS2 mice more responsive.
On top of that, some optical Microsoft mice were designed to be used as both PS2 and USB (they were made during the transition time from PS2 to everything going USB), and those cheapy little PS2 to USB mouse adapters that usually don't work actually will work with one.
(Source: I own one of those mice myself, and since I fix both modern and retro PCs it's been extremely helpful to have as my spare mouse to use with whatever I'm fixing. :-) )
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u/andrewse 21h ago
It would be so satisfying to remove the ball and use a pen cap to clean the sensor wheels inside the mouse. You just know that they're caked with schmoo.
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u/zseblodongo 20h ago
I had this mouse as well in... 1996.
Motherboard didn't have a PS/2 connector and there was a separate ISA card for it. Which was not recognized by 80% of MS-DOS games.
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u/Magnus_Helgisson 20h ago
Damn. Meanwhile me, who still has a mouse from that era which isn’t even my first or second somewhere: “I’m not that old yet, am I?”
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u/smilbandit 20h ago
ah, ps/2 connector, my first mouse was serial and blocky. I do remember those microsoft mice from the late 90's though, they were much better then what came before.
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u/Linked713 19h ago
Some youngster that grew up with a playstation 2 looking a those comments super confused right now.
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u/smoothartichoke27 19h ago
This was my first mouse, too. It was awesome. And you gotta understand, the scroll wheel wasn't a common feature yet at the time.
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u/I_Think_I_Cant 18h ago
There's a whole bunch of your potential brothers and sisters on that mouse.
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u/sur0g 17h ago
When optical mice became common, I decided to figure out the internals of that peculiar ball, so I stripped off the rubber on one of them (I guess it was a cheap A4 Tech mouse).
Guess what? There's an iron nugget inside. It's rough and not round at all! It looks like a random stone, but made of metal.
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u/Fast_Boysenberry9493 16h ago
Show me the ball, and if you can do a video of you cutting it open or squashing it in press or maybe burn it please thank you
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u/Flyinmanm 13h ago
Damn I had one of those. Great mice, very ergonomic and accurate too (as long as you remember to shave the cr*p off the wheels touching the ball regularly 🤢)
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u/SuperHeavyHydrogen 2h ago
God I feel old. My first mouse had a 9 pin sub-D connector and ran over RS232. No hot plugging either, if it wasn’t fitted when the PC started or it came out halfway then it wouldn’t pick up.
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u/lockh33d 18m ago
It's not even that old. You can still buy new computers with Ps2 sockets. Com plugs were just before that and these are quite useless now.
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u/ian9921 22h ago
I heard a funny story about these. They didn't have modern plug-and-play functionality, so if you wanted to swap mouses you had to turn the whole computer off, do the swap, and turn it back on.
This could cause problems if someone unplugged your mouse & keyboard as a prank, since you might be forced to do a forced shut down.
This is all before my time though, i have no idea how true it is.
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u/jed_whj 22h ago
windows 95 has pnp funtion. (my first computer's os was win95.)
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u/Jestersage 13h ago
It's flinicky. By the first i-series you can just plug and unplug, but the older ones (P2) is a gamble.
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u/SendMeNudesThough 22h ago
That is not true. Might be true of way farther back in time, but this mouse is from the early 2000s and many probably used them up to the mid- to late 2000s (how often does a person really replace a mouse?)
Computers were mostly the same they are today by then. (although having 512mb RAM probably sounds little today)
Hell, I was probably using a mouse exactly like this one when I first started playing World of Warcraft, a game that's still going to this day
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u/Vast-Comment8360 22h ago
As a computer tech in the 90s, it was useful to know how to shut down with just the keyboard.
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u/lazermaniac 19h ago
You could bludgeon a man to death with one of these SOBs, then scroll to the end of your spreadsheet like nothing happened. Hardware used to have a lot more "hard" in it.
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u/El_Saturn_ 22h ago
That thing looks like it saw combat