----- Original Message -----
From: "der Mouse" <mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 4:31 PM
Subject: Re: Mouse systems M4 Optical Mouse
   The other
optical mouse that requires a special pad came with early
 Sun workstations.  It looked a bit, well, holographic.  It had a
 bunch of dots in it that reflected different based on where the mouse
 was. 
 Actually, it has lines of one colour running vertically and lines of
 another colour running horizontally, against a shiny background.  To my
 eye, the vertical lines look blue and the horizontal lines grey; I
 suspect there is a reflectance characteristic my eye is not capable of
 picking up there, especially as one of the LEDs in the mouse is giving
 off invisible light (again, to my eye).
 The visibly-lit LED looks red to me, and (based on covering each LED in
 turn and seeing which dimension's motion breaks) goes with the blue
 lines (not surprisingly); the invisible-light LED goes with the
 grey-appearing lines.
 If you can find suitable inks, printing vertical and horizontal lines
 on a shiny surface should do fine - but beware that such mouse pads
 exist in at least two and I think three different resolutions; while a
 mouse designed for a fine-resolution pad works fine with a coarser pad,
 the converse is not true.  If you want I can approximate the line
 spacing of the mouse pads I have, with a ruler or tape measure and
 some careful counting.
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I think I will just hunt for a pad on ebay or find another Amiga mouse to
use, and probably mess with some grids on aluminum foil just for fun.