ST and a serial mouse

[Inky]

I've been going back over the forums here, and have heard that a serial mouse WILL work with the ST with a software patch, and then I've hear that you SHOULDn'T use one at ALL with the ST.

 

Which is it? What's the final deal on it?

[Tyrant]

The ST mouse ports use bus mice (the mouse outputs the optical signals directly instead of having its own microprocessor). Thus if you put a serial mouse into the mouse port on an st it would be a bad thing (Im not sure how bad, in theory it could destroy chips tho hopefully there's some protection against that).

 

However, the ST has a serial port on the back, and with a 9 to 25 way gender changer, and some suitable driver software, you could put a serial mouse in that way. While Im not an ST guru by any stretch of the imagination, I wouldnt expect many games would work using a serial mouse, but most gem applications should be able to handle it, with an apropriate driver loaded.