Is Serial Mouse Useful?

[Tempest]

I have a chance to get a very cheap serial mouse, but is a serial mouse on the PCjr actually useful? Did any games that would actually run on the jr support a serial mouse?

[James]

I think so. Some mid to late 80s games had mouse support. The SCI Sierra games had mouse support. Lotus 123 (v2?) and Professional Write had mouse support.

[monzamess]

I bought a serial adapter cable & NOS serial mouse because I am not patient enough to wait for a "real" PCjr mouse. It certainly works but I haven't found any real uses for it yet other than cosmetic.

[Corey986]

I have windows 1.01 now running on my jR. So a mouse is useful there.

[GHiero]

A mouse is very useful for PCjr. Colorpaint. As far as games go, few come to mind that will work on the PCjr (without hacking) and run on a PCjr. at a tolerable speed. Tass Times in Tonetown should, and probably Borrowed Time as well. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2.0 may support it, but I cannot see the utility of the mouse in that program.

[Tempest]

I bought a serial adapter cable & NOS serial mouse because I am not patient enough to wait for a "real" PCjr mouse. It certainly works but I haven't found any real uses for it yet other than cosmetic.

What adapter cable did you get? Was it one that plugged directly into the PCjr or did you get the official PCjr to Serial adapter and get a DB25 > DB9 adapter for that?

[Corey986]

I used a Logitech mouse from 1985 so it has a DB25 which connects to the PCJr serial cable.

I'm on the lookout for a green eye Microsoft serial mouse. All I have seen are the bus mice for sale (minus the bus card) on eBay for ridiculous prices.

Cheers,
Corey

[Tempest]

Is the PCjr cable a female or male DB-25? I need to dig mine out, but I know I'll need to get an adapter.

[jmetal88]

I actually constructed my own serial adapter for my mouse that goes straight from the PCjr plug to a 9-pin male D-SUB connector. I wasn't wanting to wait on any parts to try anything out, so I took apart an IDE cable I wasn't using and cut down one of the connectors to fit (removing the contacts from the part I had to cut through before I cut it). Then I just soldered wires directly from the IDC connector to the D-SUB connector. Works pretty well, although there's no housing for the plug so I have to be careful about plugging it in the right way around.

[monzamess]

I bought a serial adapter cable & NOS serial mouse because I am not patient enough to wait for a "real" PCjr mouse. It certainly works but I haven't found any real uses for it yet other than cosmetic.

What adapter cable did you get? Was it one that plugged directly into the PCjr or did you get the official PCjr to Serial adapter and get a DB25 > DB9 adapter for that?

I got an official IBM cable off eBay, PCjr -> 25-pin male. The mouse is 9-pin but included a 9-25-pin adapter. Some generic NOS 3-button mouse that can emulate Microsoft or Mouse Systems, another eBay special. I use the CuteMouse driver with it because the driver disk that came with it was unreadable.