Hey,
My NeXT mouse (Non-ADB I think...) won't scroll up/down anymore. I've taken it apart and had a look and it would appear that the rolling sensor is dead. Sigh..
So what I'm thinking is can I take an old mouse of another type and wire the NeXT connector to it to use that instead?
The NeXT mouse connector looks to me like the old-style AppleTalk connector minus the extra GeoPort pin.
Does anyone have any experience here? I'm kinda new to the specifics of the hardware so am uncertain about the whole ADB/Non-ADB thing.
The slab is a mono Turbo, the screen is the 17" Mono MegaPixel Display. My KB plugs into that only seemingly and the mouse into the KB.
Any ideas?
I think NeXT mice where made by Logitech, thus a Logitech mouse of similar vintage should be able to donate the required part, that is if you are adept with a soldering iron.
iirc it might also be possible that NeXT mice may have also been made by Alps, I think the keyboards where at least.
With the non-ADB NeXTmouse, it certainly is possible to wire another mouse to work. I cut the end off of a discarded Microsoft mouse (shudder) and wired it to work on the NeXT. You'll need the pinouts for the NeXTmouse, which were online a decade ago when I did this.
As I recall, one mouse had more wires than the other, but it still worked with the one wire unconnected. Everything else matched up. I think the NeXT connector provided a power line that the MSmouse did not use, but somehow it still worked without power (I think the quadrature pull-ups provided the current).
Beware that the tracking may not match. The MSmouse was not a high resolution mouse, so it should have matched, but fast movements in one of the 4 directions would reverse the mouse pointer. I never really used the mouse except for the occasional gag, and it wasn't too hard to avoid making extreme movements.
So basically a non ADB NeXT mouse is nearly the same as PS/2 'cept for the positions of the wires in the plug, it would be cool to hook up an optical mouse then. I might give this a try one day.