"Standard" mouse for Atari 8-bit

[Urchlay]

I know there's not really such a thing, but... if I were thinking of writing a game that can use a mouse, what type(s) of mouse would I need to support?

 

I know of the ST mouse, and there used to be a thing called the Rat, and I suppose there's no reason you couldn't hook a PC serial mouse to your 850... and I suppose the MicroUSB project supports USB mice (or will, if it doesn't yet).

 

What do people actually have, though?

[thomasholzer]

The Brundles works with the mouse,

also we at the BaPAUG written a mouse handler for Tapei, which works great.

 

As far as I can remember you can also use the Commodore mouse (mouse and cheese product), which is basically a joystick in a mouse.

Edited January 12, 2007 by thomasholzer

[Rybags]

Amiga or ST mouse is best.

 

But they aren't quite interchangable. The assignment of the axes is different IIRC - but all that means is a little bit of extra program code.

 

A PC serial or even USB mouse would be a bit pointless because hardly anyone would have the necessary interface to use it.

[Mathy]

Howdy folks

 

IIRC if you connect an Amiga mouse to an ST, the cursor will move to the left if you move the mouse to the right and vice versa. The rest should be the same.

 

John Maris wrote a nice piece of code for reading out the mouse, check out my Special Stuff page for MOUSE.ARC and MOUSEINT.ARC on the bottom of the paragraph you are directly linked to.

 

If you want to use the right button on your Atari mouse, make sure you also look at STM18BIT.TXT.

 

Greetings

 

Mathy

[Urchlay]

If you want to use the right button on your Atari mouse, make sure you also look at STM18BIT.TXT.

 

Hm, I remember modding my Atari trakball to use as an ST mouse, back when I had an ST. Wish I'd known how to make the right button work, back then.

[Urchlay]

A PC serial or even USB mouse would be a bit pointless because hardly anyone would have the necessary interface to use it.

 

Well, that's why I was asking about the serial mouse (the USB was more of a blue-sky idea). Pretty much everyone has some sort of serial interface (850, PR connection, etc) for their Atari, so for all I knew, the serial mouse might have been a good idea

[retrobits]

I'm fairly sure that I used my ST Best Trackball Mouse to play missile command on the 8bit. Its been a while so I can't remember if there was an axis problem or not. I can give it a shot tonight when i get back home.

[Cybernoid]

Here is some information from 2 years ago on using the ST Mouse:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=62429

 

Also interesting:

 

http://www.strotmann.de/twiki/bin/view/APG/TrackBall

[cas]

... and I suppose the MicroUSB project supports USB mice (or will, if it doesn't yet).

 

Yes, a generic Mouse Driver is available:

 

http://www.strotmann.de/twiki/bin/view/Mic...BCartAtariMouse

 

 

Here is my version of a Mouse Driver for the Atari ST Mouse (Assembler, for Basic and ACTION!)

 

http://www.strotmann.de/twiki/bin/view/APG...ardwDriverMouse

 

 

Carsten

Edited January 12, 2007 by cas

[ataridano]

Atari and Amiga mice seem to be "standard", and because the Atari is an Atari, ST mice are usually the best bet. Before the Amiga, Commodore made two different types of mice. One is basically like a joysitck, the other is even more unsusal, it's like a pair of paddles, one for X, one for Y. There are problems with both, the first, there's no way to tell the computer how fast the mouse is moving, just which direction it's going. The second, you can only move so far until the mouse stops responding in that direction. That's fine for a cursor I guess, but that interface never caught on anyway so it's probably pointless to support. I thought of a serial mouse too ages ago, but there's almost no software support and unless you have an 850, your only serial port is gone. I found a nice trick for using a PC mouse on the Atari, though. Buss mice use the same protocol as Atari and Amiga mice, just a different connector. I was able to buy a female DIN connector at the local electronics store (it's not as weird as I would have thought) and wired up an adaptor for the Amiga and another for the Atari. Buss mice are a little tricky to find anymore but hardly anyone wants them so they're usually cheap. I've got a bag full of Logitek and Microsoft mice which both work great, and the Logitek mice are 3 button too! I put all the pinout info on my website:

 

http://www.rdrop.com/~dano/pc/busmouse.html

[Velcro_SP]

Here's a page I did on the subject some years ago, but I think the information is covered more completely in the Atari 8-bit FAQ. My recollection however is that an Amiga mouse won't work, but an Atari ST mouse will (if the program supports it).

[Rybags]

I'm fairly sure that converting ST and Amiga mice to work on the opposing machine is just a simple case of reassigning the 4 directional wires.

 

One of the advantages of the Amiga mouse IMO was better ergonomics, but both were pretty shocking by modern standards.

 

Although, Apple mice up until the mid-1990s or so were just door-chocks with a button.

[twh/f2]

One of the advantages of the Amiga mouse IMO was better ergonomics, but both were pretty shocking by modern standards.

 

exactly and that's why I prefer my modern optical USB mouse connected to the MicroUSB cartdrige. It's extremely precise, very fast and you can use all mouse buttons easily. The driver is ready to use and indeed very simple to include in projects.

 

My bet is: whenever there is a GUI driven A8 tool please consider supporting the USB cart! thx!!

 

\thomas

[danwinslow]

It seems like everyone has used a PM sprite for the pointer...I have a C mouse driver that uses a character as the 'pointer'. I can post if anyone's interested.

[twh/f2]

It seems like everyone has used a PM sprite for the pointer...I have a C mouse driver that uses a character as the 'pointer'. I can post if anyone's interested.

 

that's quite interesting. especially in gr.0 I always thought that the chunky P/M mouse doesn't really fit into the UI. So you change the character set accordingly, don't you?

 

\twh

[danwinslow]

No. The character is selectable, I usually use the inverse blank. The routine saves and restores the character underneath as the 'pointer' travels around. You could certainly redefine a more pointery char graphic, but the routine would still move it around in character resolution. I just didn't see the point of having a pixel addressable pointer if all you are going to work with was text screens. Since I use it to drive character mode interfaces rather than, say, a drawing program, it worked well for me.

[Shawn Jefferson]

There is also a program called Multi-mouse that allows you to use joystick, mouse or trackball. There is one API for your program and then seperate drivers for each mouse type. I was contemplating writing a USB mouse driver for it some time ago but never got to it.

[Heaven/TQA]

my ST/Amiga assembler sources for using mouses on 8bit are found here

 

www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj/main.html