serial mouse under knoppix ?

[Peter L. Peres]

On Sat, 3 Apr 2004, Lennart Sorensen wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 03, 2004 at 12:07:20PM +0200, Peter L. Peres wrote:
> > I have a problem with a serial mouse under knoppix. The mouse is on ttyS1.
> > It requires expert startup and configuring (including XF86Config) but then
> > it does not work. While in X11 the config is the right one and shows the
> > mouse as serial on ttyS1. The pointer is frozen in the screen center.
> > Setting the same settings in gpm in a console works perfectly (mouse
> > works, all is well). It's a plain ms protocol serial mouse with 3 buttons.
> > Any ideas ?
>
> There is actually no such thing as a 'ms protocol 3 button mouse' at
> least not serial.  The ms serial protocol only allowed for 2 buttons in

I must have had triple vision for about 10 years then.

> general, although logitech did something to the protocol to allow their
> mice to run 3 buttons with logitech's driver.  Most 3 button serial mice
> either have a switch to select MS (2 button) or MouseSystems (3 button)

This is no longer the case. gpm works with this mouse (with 3 buttons)
with the ms setting. M$ DID provide room in the protocol for three buttons
but "wisely" decided that two buttons are enough. Thus they had an edge on
the mac (only 1 button), and remained incompatible with X11 (requires 3
buttons). Shooting oneself in the foot twice so to speak.

> protocol.  Those without a switch would often default to MS but could be
> switched to MouseSystems mode either by holding the left button on power
> on (or when connecting the mouse if already on), in which case the
> mousesystems option in gpm would allow for 3 buttons.  Some also could
> be switched with gpm using the RTS/CTS signals on the serial port.
>
> If both gpm and X are configured for ms protocol (not ms3 or anything
> fancy) then they should work (unless they don't want to share).  Using
> the gpm repeater pretty much always works.  You configure X to use
> /dev/gpmdata and add the -R option to gpm, and set the repeater protocol
> to whatever you set X to use as protocol (ms3 (serial intellimouse)
> seems to be one of the ones that work well in gpm for repeating.)

I will try this but it's a hack. I'm pretty sure the X server does not
like something about the mouse or the machine because the same machine
runs another version of Linux and there the X11 runs fine with that mouse.

Peter
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