Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Mac Musings

Optical ADB Mouse Wanted, but Who Will Build It?

Dan Knight - 2006.08.03 - Tip Jar

We've been spoiled by optical mice for a long time in the world of USB, but those with older Macs that use ADB mice have been left out in the cold.

There have been a couple of adapters to allow use of ADB mice and keyboards on USB Macs, and there are USB PCI cards that make it possible to user modern USB mice, keyboards, printers, scanners, and the like with PCI Macs, but as far as I can tell, nobody has ever made the kind of optical mouse we use today available for Apple's Desktop Bus (ADB).

I'm wondering why that is. Was it just the small market that kept it from happening? After all, but the time optical was big, Macs were no longer being built with ADB ports.

Was it perhaps an issue with electronics? Maybe ADB doesn't supply enough power for an optical mouse, or maybe the electronics were less efficient in those days and everyone now considers the market too small.

An adapter to put a USB mouse on an ADB port just doesn't make sense because of the huge difference in data rate. GeeThree has a Stealth ADB adapter that lets you use a PS/2 mouse with your older Mac. And it only costs, um, US$25.

Well, that was apparently not popular enough to remain in production.

Feasibility

I'd love to hear from anyone familiar with ADB. Is there any technical reason that an optical mouse can't work on an ADB port?

And I'd love to hear from one or more mouse manufacturers who would be willing to tackle this challenge. If ADB doesn't provide sufficient power, perhaps one or two AAA cells or some other small 3V cell could do the job.

A two-button scroll mouse would be ideal, along with a nice long cord for those who keep their Power Macs on the floor (60" sound about right?). A plain two-button mouse would even be nice, and if worst comes to worst, a one-button optical mouse would at least give us something better than those aging ADB mice we're still using.

If we end up with a multibutton mouse, we'll definitely need drivers.

I'm prepared to order 500 optical ADB mice for resale and set up a Low End Mac online store to sell them.

Any takers? Please email Dan Knight . LEM

UPDATE: There were two optical mice for ADB Macs. The earliest was by Mouse Systems and required a specially marked aluminum mouse pad. The other was a Wacom mouse that had to be used on a Wacom sketch tablet, if I recall correctly.

Dan Knight has been using Macs since 1986, sold Macs for several years, supported them for many more years, and has been publishing Low End Mac since April 1997. If you find Dan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

Recent Mac Musings

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.