info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (08/09/84)
From: Christopher A Kent <cak@Purdue.ARPA> Has anyone considered attaching a three button mouse to a Mac? Before you decide this is utter lunacy ... I'm considering getting a (non-consortium) Mac. This means that I won't have access to cheap beta releases of MacTerm and other goodies. One of my main intended uses is as a home terminal for emacs; I would like very much to be able to use the mouse to move the cursor around. Since MacTerm probably isn't going to provide anything like this (other than phoney arrow key support, which won't cut it), I figure I'll have to use SuMACc to write my own (I have other ideas for it too, but they're not important here). I also have this "spare" three button Hawley (i.e. mechanical) mouse. And other random micro hardware. It occurs to me that if the output from the standard MacMouse is like the Hawley mouse, but with only one button, I could put a z80 or such between the 3button mouse and the mac, passing all the motion lines directly, and ORing the button presses together. Thus the Mac software would work fine. But I could get crafty and insert special button press sequences into the output stream to the host, and Emacs and other programs could take advantage of three buttons for bindings! Does anyone know? Are the squeaks from the MacMouse the "normal" 4 lines of shaft encoder output? Or are they more clever? Cheers, chris ----------
info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (08/11/84)
From: Michael Rubin <RUBIN@COLUMBIA-20.ARPA> I haven't put a scope on the Mac mouse, but the innards seem to be just optical shaft encoders (read: slotted wheels and LED's, one on each axis). Someplace in the Mac documentation it says the mouse sends 90 pulses/inch of travel. If I were doing this, I might be tempted to modify the Apple mouse instead; but I happen to dislike the feel of Hawleys. Your Z80 (or whatever) button coprocessor should probably insert codes into the Mac's INPUT stream rather than the output; that way you can make the Mac do appropriate things rather than hacking up your EMACS. Or the Z80 could translate one button into a regular click, another into double-click and the third into triple-click (I'm not sure if the Toolbox knows about triple-click). If you got really clever, you might find a way of interfacing the Z80 to the keyboard so that one button could act like shift-click and another like command-click. --Mike -------
info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (08/11/84)
From: winkler@harvard.ARPA (Dan Winkler) The beta version of MacTerminal does allow you to move the cursor using the mouse. You point the mouse, hold down the option key, and click and MacTerminal sends the appropriate cursor addressing commands to position the cursor.
info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (08/15/84)
From: Kirk Kelley <KIRK.TYM@OFFICE-2.ARPA> We wish to solve this problem too. We are currently using a little box with a Z80. It is manufactured in small quantities to interface a Hawley mouse and chord board (for the empty hand) to the IBM PC and Zenith 100. The box can change to different settings and modes by receiving instructions back from the PC. For the PC the keyboard, mouse and chordboard all three plug into the box which then plugs directly into the keyboard port. The Zenith was a little trickier since it does not have a detachable keyboard. For the MAC there may be better ways to solve this problem, but we dont have the inside mac documentation. Assuming there is nothing on the mouseport inside the mac to sense any currently unused pins, one idea is to use the existing MAC mouse port for coordinates and one button. Then put the other buttons into a different port on the back or into the keyboard port. There are a couple of things we would like to know. Are there four unused codes we can send to indicate the other two mouse button up/down states? Is there some way to send info from the mac back to the keyboard port so the box can set its modes? -- kirk
info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (08/15/84)
From: ogcvax!hp-pcd!hplabs!sdcrdcf!akgua!psuvax1!burdvax!bpa!sjuvax!drexel!dave Starting with version .5x of macterminal, you can get around the emacs screen with the mouse. you point to a spot, hold down the option key, and click. Macterminal sends arrow characters to the host until the cursor gets to the mouse cursor. That makes emacs easyer to use on a mac than a vt100... I've gotten to like emacs on the mac. Dave Kliman @ drexel.