Hi folks,
Recently my father gave me his old 486DX…surprisingly with a network card in it, it manages ok. The problem came when I wanted to get rid of it’s really bad mouse connected to the serial port. I have myself a nice gateway mouse with a scroll wheel in it and I figured all I needed was the proper adapter to make it work in a serial port. Well, 3 bucks later I have myself a femalePS2 to female serial adapter as my mouse is ps2 and the computer has a male serial config. I plug it all together and nothing… the computer never recognizes a mouse connected… I put the old one back on and Voila! I have a mouse again… what gives? I checked to see if a pin wasn’t making contact but, really everything looks fine… What am I doing wrong here professionals? Thanks in advance
I’m pretty sure that serial mice and PS/2 mice don’t work in the same way and that there isn’t a simple pin adaptor that will work.
The reason that the adaptors exist is (I think) that there used to be mice with a little switch on the bottom so that they would function as either/or.
Some mice will work in both modes with an adapter but they have to be designed to work that way. Most of the higher end PS-2 mice will swing both ways but a basic, non-dual mode PS2 only mouse will not work with an adapter.
Astro is right. The PS-2 protocol and the serial protocols are completely different (different bits and bytes going back and forth and different voltage levels). Some mice are designed to be “bilingual” (meaning they speak both protocols) but even then the pinouts between the converters are sometimes different between manufacturers. The chances of buying an adapter and having it work are pretty darn slim.
A nice serial wheel mouse will run you all of about 12 bucks at wal-mart IIRC.