[rescue] Quick/Easy way to test Sun mice?

[Mouse]

> I got a pile of Sun mice (both roller and optical) from a friend who
> picked them up in a deal and wants me to test them for him.

> Is there a quick and easy way to test functionality (x,y movement,
> button presses) without having to shut down and restart a machine
> into X/CDE?

Depends on what hardware you have available and your competence and
comfort when it comes to throwing together electronics - and possibly
on what kind of mouse.

All the Sun mice I'm familiar with (which is not all of them) are
serial devices, but using TTL voltage levels rather than RS-232 voltage
levels.  With just a level shifters - and, depending on how your level
shifter works, possibly an inverter - you can put a Sun mouse, or at
least one of the kinds of Sun mouse that works that way, on a
bog-standard serial port.  They even use a standard baud rate - 1200, I
think, by default, though at least one kind can be re-strapped for 9600
and I think one or two other speeds.

Depending on what OS you have on your machine, and possibly your
comfort level with hacking around with kernel configs and the like, you
maybe could build a kernel that attaches normal serial lines, instead
of mouse and keyboard devices, to the mouse/keyboard interface
hardware.

> Are Sun mice hot swappable?  I can't find any reference either for or
> against.  Don't really want to try it out on any of my machines if
> the answer is "NO!"

I have routinely hot-swapped them.  Never even occurred to me they
might not be.  I've never had a problem I can ascribe to the practice,
but maybe I've just been lucky.

/~\ The ASCII				  Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML		mouse at rodents-montreal.org
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B