Anything better than the tank mouse?

[cbmeeks]

Sorry to ask so many questions...


As nostalgic as it is...the Amiga tank mouse is utter crap. But it's not the mouse's fault. Pretty much all ball mice are crap when you've used even the cheapest $9 optical USB mouse on a modern computer.


So, what's the cheapest/easiest way to get a USB mouse to work on an Amiga 600?


I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron and have tons of Arduino's. So I could totally go that route if possible. Especially since I'm broke at the moment...lol


Other than building my own solution, are there any good options out there?


Thanks!

[Bigtopofun]

Hi, I just ordered an optical mouse from amiga-kit, its black with amiga logo for standard amiga mouse port. Its about 30 euro.

I let you know when ive tried it out.

[AmigaHope]

As long as it doesn't draw too much power, you can chain USB -> PS/2 -> Amiga adapters just fine and use the USB optical mouse of your choice. You can also find old PS/2 optical mice without too much difficulty as your local thrift store if you want to skip one of the adapters.

Also, ergonomics aside, the ~1990 era tank mice were not bad as far as ball mice went. The average mouse you got with a wintel clone had inferior mechanical parts.

[dreadnought]

I bought the Tom adapter. You can run USB mouse, keyboard or gamepad through it. Combined with wireless Logitech it works really well (better than on Atari ST I also tried it on). Costs about 20 pounds but you can use this one on many other micros too. I think there are cheaper, dedicated Amiga versions (Jerry?) which has less functionality/ are PS2 mice only.

[quantum8]

I bought the HID2ami adapter off amibay. Works great for me.

[Misclegend]

if you are broke and you are good soldering etc you can build your own Amiga mouse from any PC cheap optical mouse

here is a Picture with instructions on how to build an Amiga optical mouse
(you have to zoom the pic to read the instructions)