NetPro Certification Courseware for NetPro Certified Systems Engineer – N.C.S.

Mouse
The insides of a mouse- contain two kinds of input electronics. One part of the mouse
detects movement and reports it, while the other part detects button activity and
reports that. Switches (the buttons) are no problem; the trick is to convert movement
to electrical signals the computer can understand. A few mice use optical sensors and
a special mouse pad, but nearly all PC mice use the mechanical ball described here.

Movement of the mouse is limited to combinations of forward/backward and left/right

motions. Most mice use a rubberized ball that, when it rolls, causes two rollers to turn.
The rollers are carefully mounted perpendicular to each other so that they can detect
one of these two directions. Movement of the rollers is coupled into motion digitizers
that sense rotation. The motion digitizers report that rotation to the processor
interface, which creates and sends messages to your computer.

Windows uses the movement report s from the mouse to update the horizontal and
vertical position where it thinks the cursor should appear, erases the old drawings of
the cursor, and draws the cursor at the new position. The mouse cursor also gets
erased and redrawn by windows every time a program draws on the screen near the
mouse. (You can see this effect by starting a video clip- an AVI, MPG or MOV file-
in windows and then moving the mouse cursor over the video playback window.
You’ll see it flicker on and off or possibly disappear entirely until the video stops.)

The process of erasing and redrawing the mouse cursor creates work for the
processor, so at one time some video board manufacturers built in hardware assists for
cursors called sprites. Sprites are also useful for moving characters and flying objects
around in video games, so in principle this was a good idea. In practice though, the
sprites often caused software problems, and because there was no standard
programming interface to control the sprites, game programmers ignored them. Very
few video boards offer sprites today.

As software packages evolved beyond simple menus and began to make use of the
powerful graphics systems coming into popular use during the mid-1980s (i.e., EGA
and VGA graphics), ever-larger amounts of information were presented in the display.
Simple, multi-layered text menus were aggressively replaced with striking graphic
user interfaces (GUIs). System options and selections were soon represented with
symbols (graphic “buttons” or “icons”), instead of plain text. Using a keyboard to
maneuver through such visual software soon became a cumbersome (if not
impossible) chore. Peripherals designers responded to this situation by developing a
family of pointing devices. Pointing devices use a combination of hardware and
software to produce and control a graphical screen cursor. A software device driver
generates the cursor and reports its position. As the pointing device is moved around,
hardware signals from the pointing device are interpreted by the device driver, which
moves the cursor in a similar manner.
 NetPro Certification Courseware for NetPro Certified Systems Engineer – N.C.S.E

By positioning the cursor over a graphic symbol and activating one, two, or three of
the buttons on the pointing device, it is now possible to select (i.e., “click” or “double
click”) and manipulate (i.e., “drag”) options in the application program instead of
using a keyboard. Three factors are needed to make pointing devices work: the
physical signal-generating hardware itself, a software driver (the “device driver”), and
the application program must be written to make use of the device driver. If any of
these three items are missing, the pointing device will not work. This chapter looks at
the technology, maintenance, and troubleshooting of two popular pointing devices:
the mouse and the trackball.

Feeding your Mouse

A serial port on a P conforms to the Electronic Industries Association RS-232C
standard, which defines both the electrical properties of signals at the port and the
way in which those signals are used. The RS 232C port of your Pc uses voltages to
indicate the logical states: A one bit is signaled by -3V to – 15V on a pin, while a
zero is signaled by +3V to +15V. Plus and Minus 12V are typical.

None of the pins of the RS 232C port were intended to deliver power. When
Microsoft developed the serial mouse, though, they noticed that the typical output line
in an RS 232C port could supply a little bit of power – around five hundredths of a
WATT. By using very low power electronics they could keep power consumption
below that limit and run the mouse completely off the port.

That observation, and the engineering behind it, has been a big part of making mice a
part of every computer. Eliminating the mouse card that had to go inside the
computer-reduced cost and perhaps, most important, simplified installation. No
screws to remove, no slots to find, no conflicts to solve. Plug it in and go.