4 ms·

Anyone remember those old CAD mice from the 80s? With the custom mousing surface, region-sensitive reticle, and 12+ buttons on the mouse? Those things were so

Anyone remember those old CAD mice from the 80s? With the custom mousing surface, region-sensitive reticle, and 12+ buttons on the mouse? Those things were so cool...

joe_bleau 17y ago
Do you mean a digitizer, or a mouse? The digitizers were impressive, but we later switched to a multibutton mouse for AutoCAD (circa R12 for DOS). I think it had 8 auxiliary buttons in a 4x2 grid, along with the primary left and right button. They were great for AutoCAD, as you could put a different osnap on each aux button, but the company disappeared before writing a windows driver. I still have one around here, somewhere...
- chadaustin 17y ago
  Hm, I think I meant a mouse. I remember it had a grid of buttons (each with a different purpose, like a ColecoVision controller) and a really elaborate mousing surface. What brand was the mouse you're talking about?
  - Luc 17y ago
    Something like http://www.interworldna.com/images/summa/summa-cursors.jpg http://www.interworldna.com/images/summa/summa-cursors.jpg or http://www.interworldna.com/GTCO/gtco-ultima.php http://www.interworldna.com/GTCO/gtco-ultima.php ? There's a lot of brands of these, they're called digitizers.
  - joe_bleau 17y ago
    Found it--it's a Prohance Powermouse 70. Looks like it has the standard left/right buttons, plus 15 additional buttons. Normal config is F1-F10, plus esc, ctrl, user, fn, and enter. The driver allowed you to customize it for apps such as AutoCAD. Typical mechanical ball mouse guts, DE-9 serial connector. Actually pretty high quality, as you'd expect for a CAD peripheral back in the day. Couldn't find an images online (I could take one if anyone is really interested), but I did see that someone was trying to reverse engineer the protocol: http://stuartl.longlandclan.yi.org/blog/2006/03/03/reverse-engineering-project-driver-for-the-prohance-powermouse-70/ http://stuartl.longlandclan.yi.org/blog/2006/03/03/reverse-e... chadaustin's mention of a custom mousing surface makes me think he was looking at a digitizer, although it could have been an old school optical mouse, such as the ones Sun used to use.

Anyone remember those old CAD mice from the 80s? With the custom mousing surface, region-sensitive reticle, and 12+ buttons on the mouse? Those things were so cool...

joe_bleau 17y ago

Do you mean a digitizer, or a mouse? The digitizers were impressive, but we later switched to a multibutton mouse for AutoCAD (circa R12 for DOS). I think it had 8 auxiliary buttons in a 4x2 grid, along with the primary left and right button. They were great for AutoCAD, as you could put a different osnap on each aux button, but the company disappeared before writing a windows driver. I still have one around here, somewhere...

chadaustin 17y ago
Hm, I think I meant a mouse. I remember it had a grid of buttons (each with a different purpose, like a ColecoVision controller) and a really elaborate mousing surface. What brand was the mouse you're talking about?
- Luc 17y ago
  Something like http://www.interworldna.com/images/summa/summa-cursors.jpg http://www.interworldna.com/images/summa/summa-cursors.jpg or http://www.interworldna.com/GTCO/gtco-ultima.php http://www.interworldna.com/GTCO/gtco-ultima.php ? There's a lot of brands of these, they're called digitizers.
- joe_bleau 17y ago
  Found it--it's a Prohance Powermouse 70. Looks like it has the standard left/right buttons, plus 15 additional buttons. Normal config is F1-F10, plus esc, ctrl, user, fn, and enter. The driver allowed you to customize it for apps such as AutoCAD. Typical mechanical ball mouse guts, DE-9 serial connector. Actually pretty high quality, as you'd expect for a CAD peripheral back in the day. Couldn't find an images online (I could take one if anyone is really interested), but I did see that someone was trying to reverse engineer the protocol: http://stuartl.longlandclan.yi.org/blog/2006/03/03/reverse-engineering-project-driver-for-the-prohance-powermouse-70/ http://stuartl.longlandclan.yi.org/blog/2006/03/03/reverse-e... chadaustin's mention of a custom mousing surface makes me think he was looking at a digitizer, although it could have been an old school optical mouse, such as the ones Sun used to use.