Hello all:
New member here. I FINALLY own an Apple IIe. When I was a kid back in the early 1980's I always wanted an Apple II but it wasn't in the family budget. After almost 36 years I finally own one. I became a vintage computer collector several years back as it fuels my nostalgia or the early days when I learned to code and hack. The unit I bought on eBay does not have a mouse and the M0100 mice on eBay are way over priced. So I am setting out to build my own adapter to use a PS2 mouse on an Apple IIe.
I did find a guy in NZ (http://roger.geek.nz/mouse.html) selling an adapter for about $28 USD but I thought I'd give it a go first; however, I am having a heck of a time finding pinouts and data about the Apple mouse card so I can begin to look at how to wire this up and if I need to draft any circuit in between or use a microcontroller to convert any impluses.
If anyone has any guidance to assist in building this adapter, it is most welcome.
Cheers,
mark
Mark
Have you seen the Apple // Mouse Board schematic on the apple2.org.za site?
James
Link removed at poster's request - Tom
Hi James,
I did find the schematic about an hour ago on Archive.org.
FYI: the link you posted resolves to a potentially malicious site. I'd be careful going to that URL.
Mark
Thanks for the tip-0ff, iOS hadn't flagged anything but better safe than sorry! Unfortunately, I just missed the time period in which I could edit my previous post to remove the link.
Out of curiosity, could you post the link you found on Archive.org?
Chesh
My bad, I thought it was archive.org but now I can seem to locate it. Its a pdf. Can we post files here?
Mouse Schematic
Much appreciated!
Assuming I can find a known good Apple II mouse board somewhere, my research suggests it shouldn't be impossible to get this working with PS/2.
It appears to be a quadrature mouse, which are both well understood and easy to adapt to PS/2. How easy? I did it for the Amiga once using an Arduino plugged into a breadboard and it worked first time.
(Of course I had my directions inverted and buttons mapped across, but that was easy to fix :-D )
I'll have to see if I can find an Apple II mouse board somewhere...
Some resources:
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/11859/will-any-serial-mouse-connect-to-classic-macs
http://danceswithferrets.org/geekblog/?p=742
(Heh. If I CAN get it working, it'd be tempting to combine an Apple II mouse board directly into a PS/2 adapter and have them all on one board.)
Cheers!
Chesh
There is one on eBay right now, bidding starting at $70 or make an offer. Not sure what your budget is.
eBay Mouse card listing
Thanks for the references. Had seen the one on retrocomputing, but the other is new to me and very interesting. I have worked a lot with Arduinos.
Cheers
Yeah I saw that one :-)
Untested and someone's cut off the DE-9 connector off the end.
Also someone on a mailing list pointed out that someone has been here before us.
https://www.applefritter.com/content/five-new-opensource-appleii-cards-coming-soon-we-need-your-help
(Fourth product from the top)
I'll drop Zane a PM and see how far along their plans got.
When I first found this site, there was an old post, possible from 2014, where a user said they had like a dozen Apple II mice. I would be great if there was a swap meet/For Sale section in the site where people could trade/sell items in a more informal way the sites like eBay. It would also be cool b/c I think a community like this would be more inclined to help one another than eBay, where many sellers doing so as a business.
I would totally be interested in buy an Apple II mouse from someone here vs eBay.
Also, interesting cards. It would very cool if those PS2 cards became available.
Zane has indicated that he's working on some exciting new cards, but the Mousecard is on the backburner for now.
I'll probably put this aside for now, unless I luck in and get an Apple Mouse Card or an Apple IIc in the near future.
Chesh