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Best Mouse Driver For InPort ISA On IBM 5150

ctrl-alt-rees

ctrl-alt-rees

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Joined
Jul 26, 2007
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Hi All,

I have a Microsoft InPort mouse on its way to me, it's the version pictured which I gather is an early one:

inportmouse.jpg

I'm going to be fitting it into my IBM 5150 with 640K of RAM and IBM PC DOS 2000.

Obviously resources are at an absolute premium in this machine so what's the best version of the Microsoft Mouse driver to use? I assume it's a TSR so the one with the smallest footprint - possibly the earliest release they have on WinWorld unless there are known bugs that might make a later revision a more sensible choice?

I have no experience of using a mouse with a machine this old but thought it would be fun to play with so I'm glad to receive any wisdom from 8088 mouse users.

TIA!
 
I have the same Microsoft Inport Bus mouse / interface and the biggest issue I had with it was the extra IRQ the card required. almost like having an extra serial port.

I found myself totally out of IRQ and DMA so i ended up pulling the inport card and just using a serial mouse instead when i added a SB 2.0

My Inport card came with a 360k floppy with mouse drive / software so i've just been using that.
 
I would suggest the CuteMouse driver since it has a *teeny* RAM footprint, smaller than any old-skool driver I've found so far, but unfortunately it needs a V-20 CPU. (Also don't know for sure if it works with InPort.)
 
Later DOS software often requires at least version 6.0 of the Microsoft mouse driver.

I have that same mouse and card, in the original box including a DOS version of Paintbrush, as shown in this video:

 
Eudimorphodon said:
I would suggest the CuteMouse driver since it has a *teeny* RAM footprint, smaller than any old-skool driver I've found so far, but unfortunately it needs a V-20 CPU. (Also don't know for sure if it works with InPort.)
Click to expand...

Cutemouse 1.9 doesn't need a V20 IIRC. Even if it did, it could be trivially altered and re-assembled. The only problem, for the OP, is: Cutemouse doesn't support the InPort. v1.9 uses BIOS calls to handle bus mice and PS/2 mice, but an XT is not going to have that support in its BIOS. 2.0 supports hardware directly, but only PS/2 mice.
 
Stone said:
Since slots are at a premium even more I don't see why you're going with that instead of a serial mouse.
Click to expand...

I would agree. Inport mouse is cool from an oddware perspective, but a serial mouse is more practical. especially if you already have a free serial port you aren't using for something else.

an Inport card requires the same resources as a serial port card (or serial port on a multi-function card) so I'd only see it if you didn't have a serial port already (or the serial port is being used for something else while the mouse is in use)
 
Thanks everyone. I hadn't even considered a serial mouse despite already owning a few. I guess that settles it.

Still happy to own this unusual piece of hardware and will try it out anyway just for fun - I love historical oddities like this!
 
SmellyGeekBoy said:
Thanks everyone. I hadn't even considered a serial mouse despite already owning a few. I guess that settles it.

Still happy to own this unusual piece of hardware and will try it out anyway just for fun - I love historical oddities like this!
Click to expand...

if you have a 286 or 386 system with more free resources to toss at it the inport mouse might be fun in those systems :) I am probably gonna put mine in my IBM AT with windows 2
 
pinkdonut666 said:
if you have a 286 or 386 system with more free resources to toss at it the inport mouse might be fun in those systems :) I am probably gonna put mine in my IBM AT with windows 2
Click to expand...

My next system up from this one is a 486 DX4/100 which seems a bit too new for this type of mouse. I don't need too much of an excuse to add a 286 to the lineup, however... ;)
 
Windows 95 doesn't support an Inport mouse which rather limits how modern a system the Inport makes sense with.
 
SmellyGeekBoy said:
My next system up from this one is a 486 DX4/100 which seems a bit too new for this type of mouse. I don't need too much of an excuse to add a 286 to the lineup, however... ;)
Click to expand...

more systems is always better! XD don't get me wrong, I used my inport mouse with an IBM XT for awhile and it worked great for windows 3.0 in real mode while i was playing with that. But i wanted to have a sound card, and sound trumped having inport mouse. I need to get my hands on an adlib card instead of a soundblaster for older machines then i want have as many restrictions.
 
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