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MOUSE (4)

serial mouse interface

CONFIG

    Serial mice are connected to a serial RS232/V24 dialout line, see cua(4) for a description.

DESCRIPTION

    The pinout of the usual 9 pin plug as used for serial mice is:

    center;
    r c l.
    pin     name    used for
    2       RX      Data
    3       TX      -12 V, Imax = 10 mA
    4       DTR     +12 V, Imax = 10 mA
    7       RTS     +12 V, Imax = 10 mA
    5       GND     Ground
    

    This is the specification, in fact 9 V suffices with most mice.

    The mouse driver can recognize a mouse by dropping RTS to low and raising it again. About 14 ms later the mouse will send 0x4D ('M') on the data line. After a further 63 ms, a Microsoft-compatible 3-button mouse will send 0x33 ('3').

    The relative mouse movement is sent as dx (positive means right) and dy (positive means down). Various mice can operate at different speeds. To select speeds, cycle through the speeds 9600, 4800, 2400 and 1200 bit/s, each time writing the two characters from the table below and waiting 0.1 seconds. The following table shows available speeds and the strings that select them:

    center;
    l l.
    bit/s   string
    9600    *q
    4800    *p
    2400    *o
    1200    *n
    

    The first byte of a data packet can be used to synchronisation purposes. The Microsoft protocol uses 1 start bit, 7 data bits, no parity and one stop bit at the speed of 1200 bits/sec. Data is sent to RxD in 3-byte packets. The dx and dy movements are sent as two's-complement, lb (rb) are set when the left (right) button is pressed:

    center;
    r c c c c c c c.
    byte    d6      d5      d4      d3      d2      d1      d0
    1       1       lb      rb      dy7     dy6     dx7     dx6
    2       0       dx5     dx4     dx3     dx2     dx1     dx0
    3       0       dy5     dy4     dy3     dy2     dy1     dy0
    
    Original Microsoft mice only have two buttons. However, there are some three button mice which also use the Microsoft protocol. Pressing or releasing the middle button is reported by sending a packet with zero movement and no buttons pressed. (Thus, unlike for the other two buttons, the status of the middle button is not reported in each packet.) Logitech serial 3-button mice use a different extension of the Microsoft protocol: when the middle button is up, the above 3-byte packet is sent. When the middle button is down a 4-byte packet is sent, where the 4th byte has value 0x20 (or at least has the 0x20 bit set). In particular, a press of the middle button is reported as 0,0,0,0x20 when no other buttons are down. The Mousesystems protocol uses 1 start bit, 8 data bits, no parity and two stop bits at the speed of 1200 bits/sec. Data is sent to RxD in 5-byte packets. dx is sent as the sum of the two two's-complement values, dy is send as negated sum of the two two's-complement values. lb (mb, rb) are cleared when the left (middle, right) button is pressed:

    center;
    r c c c c c c c c.
    byte    d7      d6      d5      d4      d3      d2      d1      d0
    1       1       0       0       0       0       lb      mb      rb
    2       0       dxa6    dxa5    dxa4    dxa3    dxa2    dxa1    dxa0
    3       0       dya6    dya5    dya4    dya3    dya2    dya1    dya0
    4       0       dxb6    dxb5    dxb4    dxb3    dxb2    dxb1    dxb0
    5       0       dyb6    dyb5    dyb4    dyb3    dyb2    dyb1    dyb0
    

    Bytes 4 and 5 describe the change that occurred since bytes 2 and 3 were transmitted. The Sun protocol is the 3-byte version of the above 5-byte Mousesystems protocol: the last two bytes are not sent. The MM protocol uses 1 start bit, 8 data bits, odd parity and one stop bit at the speed of 1200 bits/sec. Data is sent to RxD in 3-byte packets. dx and dy are sent as single signed values, the sign bit indicating a negative value. lb (mb, rb) are set when the left (middle, right) button is pressed:

    center;
    r c c c c c c c c.
    byte    d7      d6      d5      d4      d3      d2      d1      d0
    1       1       0       0       dxs     dys     lb      mb      rb
    2       0       dx6     dx5     dx4     dx3     dx2     dx1     dx0
    3       0       dy6     dy5     dy4     dy3     dy2     dy1     dy0
    

FILES

    /dev/mouse a commonly used symlink pointing to a mouse device

SEE ALSO

    cua(4) bm(4)

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