Jolt Country

I will note what I learned about serial mice in this thread.

Packed and ready to ship tomorrow.

1 (one) Logictech serial mouse. No cheese.

Can we work out a cultural exchange? Is there something from out here you'd like? Or MYSTERy???

Ctmouse.com or exe is supposed to be a lightweight mouse driver for DOS.

So I think there were three "families" of DOS drivers for mice in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Logitcech, Microsoft and Mouse Systems. There may be more!

ctmouse.exe is meant to be a lightweight driver that gets you setup on any old mouse. What I saw is that they arranged flags to not look for Mouse Systems mice. I assume there is a good technical reason for this, so I won't get into it, but I did have that moment of realization where I was like, the goddamn driver everyone tells you to use intentionally doesn't look for the kind of pointing device I have.

Installing a driver from the Mouse Systems heritage works differently than the others. When I use cutemouse.exe or what I think is an era-specific driver from Mouse Systems specifically, code is clearly stored in RAM without checking that the actual mouse is there. I am not seeing any evidence in DOS that the trackball I bought works. But Fallout's installer won't work if it doesn't see a mouse attached... once I load the Mouse Driver driver, it will start, the mouse (trackball in my case) just doesn't do anything.

This Mouse Driver trackball DID work on Windows XP last night, via the serial port. So the device is fine. This makes me wonder if I am not interfacing with the hardware pins on the motherboard correctly. There are two UART ports on the motherboard for my DOS machine and I am assuming that they function as COM1 and COM2. To ensure that this is right, I could get a loopback device and a terminal program like ole PROCOMM or TELIX from the BBS days, and see that what I am typing is reflecting back. I guess that is my next step.

Gawd, jumper pins. I remember how desperately I held onto my configuration chart for the ports when we used that six phone port card for downloading programs to the cnc mills.

Re: mouse. Shipped, but not too fast.

You're actually doing me a favor because I can show the missus proof positve that I'm really cleaning out the bins in the basement.

You are an amazing person for doing this, and I shall see if I can find something to make this a true cultural exchange (that is not going to add to a basement bin).

SUCCESS! Let me tell you about one of life's little successes.

Aardvark's serial mouse showed up today. At the time I heard it dropped off, I was working on one of those ships in a bottle and I was just about done with it. I think I've spent about eight months trying to finish it. I immediately pushed it off the kitchen table and kicked it outside and down the mountain. Bon voyage, dickwad! It was all just killing time until we could once again travel in the land of SERIAL MICE.

I hooked up the mouse to my Pentium and got fooled: ctmouse.exe said it installed a driver, but that is because I still had it in a mode where it was going to do that for the Mouse Systems one and not check if a mouse is actually there and it can see it. So I changed the flag there.

At first, when plugged into the motherboard, the Logitech SERIAL MOUSE that Vark gave me was not recognized! I did some more reading and it is possible that my serial port and serial cable could be wired differently. I had bought what should have been a PCI card with two more serial ports on it at the beginning of my venture. One of the ports plugged into the card with a detachable connector. I detached it, put it directly against the COM port of the motherboard, rebooted and it worked. It worked!

(It needs a mouse pad. I have mouse pads. It just needs one. Because rollerball mice need one. I have no idea how you people live like this.)

So I was able to start Fallout and sure enough, Vark's SERIAL MOUSE is moving around the screen. Now! Now I will start a new thread about what a debacle patching the original Fallout has turned out to be. Will I be able to use my save game from my Steam playthrough? I doubt it. Rendering most of this a giant and colossal waste of time on that front. Thank god for chiptunes.

Thanks, Vark!

Very welcome! Enjoy Fallout the way it's s'posed to be!

AArdvark wrote: Fri May 17, 2024 2:53 am Very welcome! Enjoy Fallout the way it's s'posed to be!

You mean, with an approaching cloud of... oh what was that term for a huge cloud of radioactive dust particles? Somehow I think I've seen the word for that recently... Anyway, isn't that the way Fallout is supposed to be played, with an approaching cloud of radioactive dust particles, whatever they're called? Yeah, if I could only remember what that cloud of radioactive dust particles was called, that's the way Fallout is supposed to be played.