14 Jun
2025
14 Jun
'25
2:27 a.m.
On Wed, Jun 11, 2025 at 18:35 Greg A. Woods <woods(a)robohack.ca> wrote:
At Tue, 10 Jun 2025 12:10:28 +1000, Rob Pike
<robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Subject: [TUHS] Re: Your Most Prized UNIX Artifacts?
Ah yes. Mice. I still have two new-in-their-boxes DEC Hawley puck mice.
VSXXX-AA, with two rollers.
They kept tracking reliably whereas the ball variant always got gunked up
and skipped, but our DEC mice tended to succumb to Nettrek disease, where
the left button would get clicked to death, and the replacements were
inevitably the ball version.
I never managed to source a wheel version at the time to just carry with
me. Got two years later, planning to give one to a friend a few months
older than me for his collection. Cancer intervened and he is several years
gone now, alas.
An original, hand-wire-wrapped Jerq board, later renamed Blit because of
marketing. Also the original mouse, made by Prof Nicoud's lab and signed
by
him on the bottom.
The mice that came with the DMD-5620s, the Dépraz Mouse, "Made in
Switzerland" (one of mine says "Type D 85 / P") looks very similar. I
have one in an original AT&T package too.