New addition on the mouses.info: the Vatek Color-Mouse, highly copied from the Microsoft 2nd gen mouse and claimed to be the 1st color mouse on the market (ironically, the reviewed unit has beige color, instead of blue, red, green, or yellow, which were far more typical for this model). The mouse had even more remarkable 3-button sibling sold under the wide range of brands, but this two-button variant was specially designed for Vatek and its "colorization" efforts. As usual, you can find more photos and description on the website and in static PDF.

Today mouses.info was updated with a remarkable device, Xerox Alto optical mouse - the first optical mouse in the world. It was designed for the Xerox Alto computer to replace its expensive and rather unreliable mechanical mice. In fact, this mouse from 1981 introduced the matrix of scanning sensors, used by modern optical mice - only because of the much lower resolution, the Alto mouse needed a mousepad (or other surface with a pattern). Interestingly, the mousepad was made of paper, and Xerox proposed reproducing it by photocopying :)

As usual, you can find more photos and details about this mouse on the website and in static PDF.

A new joystick has been added to mouses.info - DEC H3060. This joystick model was used to control the cursor on the PDP-11 family of 16-bit minicomputers. The PDP-11s were created by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the 1970s and were sold for about 3 decades. These computers are best known for the fact that the UNIX operating system was created for them. As for the H3060 joystick, it's a big device with an aesthetically pleasing design and a uniquely awful implementation of buttons :)

See more about this joystick with photos and other details on the website and in the static PDF.

A new update on mouses.info: the largest beast among mice of 80s, SMC Magic Mouse. It is the first mouse produced by Contriver (just when Contriver was trying hard to choose a name for itself), and also the most unusual and terrible one from many perspectives. It was so huge that user's wrist even didn't touch the table. It had color-encoded buttons, following the initial Xerox idea, abandoned by everyone including Xerox itself. It was an absolute positioning device, encoding coordinates with analog voltage, plugged into the analog joystick port. And it had belt drives inside :) A user's nightmare, but an amazing specimen for research.

As usual, more photos and details about the mouse (including its steampunk-looking internals) are on the website and in a static PDF.

The first of two updates appeared today on mouses.info is a quadLYNX trackball from Asher Engineering, a modification of the LX200 trackballs designed by Honeywell, a subsidiary of Disc Instruments. Variant from Asher was made for Apple Macintosh computers, so it has one button less than other LX200s. Remarkably, it uses mechanical encoder, just like the earliest versions of the LX200, which are rarely seen in photos online. As always, more details and photos are present on the website and in a static PDF.

The second of two updates added today to mouses.info is the Asher Turbo trackball from the same Asher Engineering. Despite its exterior differences from the previous quadLYNX trackball, it was also labeled as the LX200 (in fact, both trackballs were advertised by Asher at the same time). Also trackballs have much in common internally, but Asher manufactured this one itself (as best it could), and heavily advertised its unique "patented high-tech encoder used in sophisticated aerospace instrumentation like aircraft, missiles, torpedos, gyros, and space shuttles" as a strong advantage over competitors with optomechanical encoders (especially Kensington). No spoilers: as always, more information and photos (including the mysterious "patented hi-tech encoder") can be found on the website and in the static PDF.

A new mouse addition to to mouses.info is the Genius GM-5 mouse - a variation of the 1st mouse produced by Taiwanese KYE Systems under the now famous Genius brand. The GM-5 is a version of Genius GM-3 and GM-4 mice, adapted for Commodore computers. The publication was started a long time ago, but got stuck due to the lack of information about the production date. Finally, thanks to an advertising found by chance, the situation became more clear (as well as the uncertainty about the supposed previous model, GM-2). As always, see details with more info and photos on the website or in the static PDF.

The previous mouse, Genius GM-5, had probably borrowed its noticeably brick-like shape from a historical predecessor - the Torrington Manager Mouse from 1985, which was added today to mouses.info. This Connecticut-born device is a remarkable rodent in many ways. The Manager Mouse was made by the company with a century-long history of needle manufacturing. The Manager Mouse was the first mass-produced (and the most known) mouse with wheels instead of a ball (based on the motion detection scheme invented by Douglas Engelbart for the very first mouse). The Manager Mouse also had an infrared version, which became the first widely known wireless mouse on the market). And finally, it was pretty terrible compared to its more traditional ball-based competitors from Logitech and Microsoft :) Well, more details and photos about this rare beast are on the website or in the static PDF, as always.

A bunch of new updates on mouses.info has been prepared, starting with probably the ugliest of Apple mice, the Apple Desktop Bus Mouse. Introduced in 1986 along with the ADB bus, it was the 1st official "snow white" mouse, following the design language developed by Frog Design. Surprisingly, the "snow white design" has nothing to do with white, but instead means light gray body with smoke gray accents :) Anyway, the mouse turned out to be so angular that it's impossible to unsee - it's a kind of Cybertrack among mice, both in shape and ergonomics :) As usual, more photos and details about the mouse can be found on the website and in a static PDF.

Mowing forward with mouses.info updates, here is an exotic rodent from Brazil: the TPX Mouse, introduced in 1986 for Spectrum-compatible Brazilian computers. It's top is clearly inspired by the Microsoft's green-eyed mouse (so named for the color of its buttons), but the rectangular bottom of this dark-skinned, blue-eyed chimera belongs to the Manager Mouse released a year earlier by the Torrington Company - a major bearing manufacturer from Connecticut. To say more, examining the mouse reveals that it actually is Manager Mouse in it's bottom part. It doesn't simply use wheels instead of a ball to detect movement, but has a lot of identical details including a pair of tiny high-durable bearings (long live Connecticut!) used as as bushings. However, the electronic part looks quite Brazilian, and it is located mostly in the connector plug, which makes sense given that the plug is larger than the mouse itself 😊 As usual, more details and photos about TPX Mouse are available on the website and as a static PDF.