(SOLVED?) Re: [CLUE-Tech] Logitech optical mouse?

Jed S. Baer thag at frii.com
Fri Jul 5 11:35:43 MDT 2002


On Thu, 4 Jul 2002 09:54:51 -0600
Dave Price <davep at kinaole.org> wrote:

> I am not sure if this is correct, but I sysmlinked /deb/input/mice to
> /dev/psaux. 
> 
> The new setting (/dev/input/mice) seems to be an XFree-86-4'ism.  I saw
> some discussion about how it lets gpm and X share the mouse; I do not
> run gpm, so the symlink works for me.
> 
> When I tried "mknod /dev/input/mice c 13 63" I got a 'cannot open / no
> such device' upon starting X.

I had a look at /usr/src/linux/Documentation/input/input.txt. The entire
"input" subsystem, at this point, appears to be related entirely to USB
devices (although it's written to be generic). So,
/dev/input/[mice|mouse{0-30}] have nothing to do with a mouse attached to
the PS2 port. IIRC, you're using a KVM, with the mouse attached using a
USB/PS2 adapter. So /dev/mice doesn't enter into the picture at all.

I have 'Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"' in my XF86Config, and it works fine,
but as Tim pointed out, if I exit from X-Windows, then my console mouse is
whacked out. (Thanks to Tim for that "pointer").

As a side issue, did somebody here mention the USB/PS2 adapter being just
a pin->pin device? I haven't looked at it in detail, but I just did some
transplant surgery on my Logitech wheelmouse, and noticed that PS2 is six
wires, while USB is four. That's at the mainboard inside the mouse. Given
that USB needs logic on it for collision avoidance (or bus sharing), while
the PS2 port doesn't, I'd be surprised if the adapter doesn't have some
bit of logic in it.

jed
-- 
We're frogs who are getting boiled in a pot full of single-character
morphemes, and we don't notice. - Larry Wall; Perl6, Apocalypse 5



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