Sender:	nate AT cartsys DOT com
Message-ID:	<35E43B22.A5E2990C@cartsys.com>
Date:	Wed, 26 Aug 1998 09:43:14 -0700
From:	Nate Eldredge <nate AT cartsys DOT com>
MIME-Version:	1.0
To:	James Dominy <jdominy AT saturn DOT cs DOT unp DOT ac DOT za>
CC:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: Mouse drivers for DJGPP programs under win95
References:	<904125256 DOT 452793 AT mars DOT cs DOT unp DOT ac DOT za>

James Dominy wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm yet another amateur game programmer intent on releasing a game before my
> 190th birthday at the rate things are going. Anyway, I've been thinking
> about a problem that win95 may cause for all those hapless people who only
> bought into the whole computer era after win95 was released. Win95 needs no
> mouse driver installed before it starts, or opens a dos box. Hence old DOS
> apps that required a mouse driver no longer work with a mouse, unless the
> user installs one themselves. In the interests of being nice to my fellow
> programmers from bygone days, I don't particularly feel like finding a
> 'freeware' mouse driver to ship with my game and would really like to write
> my own. Problem being, I need info on how to do this. Assuming I can
> determine which port to read from (not too difficult really) I now need to
> know what the values I get from the port mean. I've tried a simple loop to
> display values indefinetly but a lot of the values are used repeatedly by
> DIFFERENT actions with the mouse. ie: i get a 64 for 'both button one' down
> and 'move left'

This is a really difficult task:

* You have to support both serial mice (which requires some fairly
complicated serial I/O code), and bus mice.

* There are many different protocols for mice.  AFAIK, they are all
documented (somewhere...), but in order to be nice you have to support
them all, and that is a big pain.  There are at least Microsoft, Mouse
Systems, Logitech, and probably others.

You could include information on where to find drivers for various mice
(and most people who are post-95 will have Microsoft-style mice).  Also,
I believe that if the program is run in a 95 DOS box, mouse support will
be available (though I could be wrong).

-- 

Nate Eldredge
nate AT cartsys DOT com

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