Mastodawn

I left my work mouse at the office yesterday and will be WFH most of this week, so once again I'm completely unironically using the IntelliMouse Optical USB and PS/2 Compatible for serious stuff.

It tracks slower than a modern optical, but that can be adjusted in software, and it's got more than enough buttons for what I need day-to-day.

Adopt, don't shop - there's a lovely senior mouse in an op shop near you that will give you boundless love, if only you'll give it a chance. #retrocomputing

Joel Michael 2d ago

@timixretroplays you may not like it, but this is what a perfect mouse looks like.

🇲🇽 🤖2d ago

@jpm @timixretroplays

It was effin' great!

@v @jpm is* effin' great 🙂

🇲🇽 🤖2d ago

@timixretroplays @jpm

You are absolutely right. I love the translucent belly lighted up at night.

@jpm oh, I like it alright.

I actually never used to, because I was always in the Logitech camp and my rich friends were always the ones with the fancy expensive Microsoft ones, but I'm definitely coming round to it these days.

RyeNCode 🇨🇦2d ago

@timixretroplays
I keep one of those inside a "In case of emergency... Break glass" type of container.

Ok it's a drawer of used, but still usable mice. Same thing really.

@RyeNCode here's my mouse "drawer". There's some cool stuff here that can't currently be used on modern systems easily or at all - that Mouse Systems beauty in the middle for example uses a different protocol to Microsoft mice of the same era - so a long-term project for me is to get into the details of old PS/2 and serial mice and build an adapter that brings them back to life.

Robert Kist 🇦🇹 🇸🇬2d ago

@timixretroplays this thing was honestly the best thing MS ever produced. The indestructible Intellimouse

@timixretroplays gave me PTSD shudders. I can't count how many of them I replaced working in a computer shop. Not because they were bad, but because _everyone_ had one!

@sortius you'd make some serious beer money now if you'd kept all those "worthless" mice to put on eBay today

hamburglar26 2d ago

@timixretroplays Still my favorite mouse of all time. I wore out two of them in the 2000s and posts like these remind me that I should get another one.

@hamburglar26 there's still thousands of them kicking around on every continent that haven't been worn out yet. We've got a lot of work to do.

@timixretroplays I still have my beige variant — albeit a bit yellowed now. And it still works perfectly.

@gregly I picked a black one precisely because the beige ones are more obviously aged and harder to find looking mint, but things like Retrobright exist for this reason 🙂

abrasive 2d ago

@timixretroplays my FPS gaming mouse is still one of these - from 2012! amazed the cable hasn't died yet tbh (that's what killed the last one in 2012, fatigue where it exits the mouse)

Gegueure 🇨🇦2d ago

@timixretroplays I love the IntelliMouse, I have a bunch of them adopted from the thrift shop. One at home, one I airbrush-painted with a Xbox color scheme, one for every computer at the family business...

Rick T-137 🥒2d ago

@timixretroplays That takes me back! I used to work for Microsoft support on the Home team, so I supported this mouse, the ergo keyboard, the joysticks, Flight Sim and Space Sim. THAT was a fun job!

Thanks for sharing!

#Microsoft #Mouse #RetroComputing #Win95 #Win98 #WinME #FlightSimulator #FlightSim #Sidewinder3D

Ari [APz] Sovijärvi 2d ago

@timixretroplays They also made Explorer Trackball, which was my favorite trackball for a very long time.

@apzpins @timixretroplays wow I've never seen one of those but that is just straight up Y2K blobject glory and I want one already

It can join my Logitech right-thumb trackballs and Kensington Expert Mouse

@apzpins @timixretroplays oh it's apparently what the Ploopy Classic is based on. Cool.

Ari [APz] Sovijärvi 2d ago

@vxo I remember when whoever made Ploopy started posting early work in progress shots somewhere, maybe Reddit's Trackballs sub. It was an honest clone of the Explorer Trackball.

Here's a very high mileage original Trackball Explorer to compare.

Ari [APz] Sovijärvi 2d ago

@vxo It was very close to Logitech's Trackman marble FX, but had better shape at least for my hand. I kept them alive for log into 2020s, until I found Elecom's Huge.