phr@allegra.UUCP (08/26/83)
I got a look at the $50 Color Computer Mouse from Radio Shack today. It has one wide button on top, like the Lisa mouse, and about a 3/4" diameter single ball on the bottom. It's a little bit bigger than the Hawley mouse, and it has rounded edges so it's more comfortable to hold. It plugs into the CoCo's joystick port; I have no idea what this means electrically but the button on top is referred to in the manual as the "fire button" (ouch). I should hope it wouldn't be too hard to adapt the mouse to other interfaces. You might also be able to drill some holes in the front and mount some pushbutton switches there. It has the right shape on the outside for this, but I don't know if the mechanism on the inside would get in the way. The mouse has a slightly chintzy feel and appearance, which I find quite acceptable considering its price. I could get the bearing to make unpleasant noises if I rubbed it the wrong way, but the rolling action was still reasonably smooth, perhaps because of the large ball. The manual says that the mouse can move the cursor to any point on a 64 by 64 grid on the CoCo with 4.5" of travel, which suggests a resolution of about 1.75mm. This is pretty coarse, but it could be the fault of the CoCo (i.e. the mouse might do better internally). I doubt this since the angular displacement of the ball per tick is about the same as other mice. Conclusion: fine for the price, if you can hack the interface and live with one button (or add more). It's certainly not preferable to any other mouse I've tried, but it's quite useable and much cheaper.