Oddware: Microsoft InPort bus mouse & Paintbrush for DOS

[@Zizzily]

Another interesting thing about the bus mouse, and the reason for the 9-pin connector is that there is no processor on the mouse. Even PS/2 mice had a small processor since PS/2 was a data bus (GND, CLK and DATA) so it had to figure out movements and send data over the PS/2, where the bus mouse is completely dumb and all the processing is done on the card itself.

[@Lemons28KZ]

I think with the text, you had to drag out how far you wanted the text to go horizontally. That would explain why it's just a vertical line.

[@Damaniel3]

You can actually (barely) see the horizontal adjustment control halfway down the text box.

[@anmarsalih4314]

Request the 3.5" disk, just to see Microsoft response :)

[@kylehungerford7746]

They be like sir we don't know what a floppy is

[@jessihawkins9116]

@Bri Guy WordPerfect 5.1 was the best version. I have a 286 and 486 computer still and an ibm wheel writer with 9” monitor for envelopes and forms.

[@StevenSmyth]

The thing about entering text into a box was pretty common amongst most graphics software at the time. Even professional applications like Aldus Freehand and Adobe Illustrator made you enter your text into a box, and then if you had to change fonts or type styles, you would edit in the text window. To have text follow a path for example, the workflow for this was as follows; you'd lay down a path (a bezier curve, shape, etc.) then open the text tool, type your text out and format it the way you needed. The text would appear on the drawing, To have the text follow your path you'd select the text and the path and choose "Text on a path..." then adjust the look and position of the text inline, however, to edit the text, you'd still open the text window and make your changes. Believe me, when Freenand introduced inline text editing (v 4.0), it was a welcome addition and cut down on the additional steps necessary to create text effects. Also, I noticed when the text was laid down in Paintbrush, it was inserted as an object, with handles. I don't know if you saw them but you could probably have manipulated them to get the look you were going for. Weird that changing text attributes just lays down more text boxes. My go to app for reading old graphics formats is Thorsten Lemke's GraphiConvertor for the Mac. It's still out there and can read anything. I had some old Degas files from the Atari ST when I was transitioning to the Mac and it read them up like a champ and exported them out as TIFFs. Very cool video.

[@Vebinz]

Deluxe Paint had direct text on screen.

[@megabojan1993]

Where can I buy a cereal-port mouse? :)))))))

[@Gameboygenius]

You don't buy those. You have to wait for a mouse to sneak into your house and make a hole ("port") in your cereal box and then capture that mouse.

[@megabojan1993]

Hahaha good reply ;)

[@Astinsan]

You can only get super cereal from al gore

[@rdxdt]

If i eat too much cereal i'm a considered a cereal killer?

[@megabojan1993]

If you eat too much cereal, you are considered serial cereal killer :)

[@blazinator2972]

God, your videos are almost same quality as 8-Bit Guy ones, you deserve more subs

[@Blackadder75]

less people are interested in some of the more obscure VWestlife stuff, but I watch both

[@feieralarm]

That connector is a standard 9 pin mini-DIN connector (PS/2 is a 6 pin mini-DIN).

[@Caseytify]

Reminds me of an Apple Desktop Bus connector.

[@uxwbill]

I'd guess that the InPort mouse actually sold quite well, based on how many cards and mice I've seen. I also have a set of adapters for InPort mice to serial and (I think) PS/2.

[@lucasrem]

uxwbill 1993 will be the year for mouse boxes to incluse some adapter, RS232 was just as good! not needing any adapter at all!

[@juanignacioaschura9437]

It was particularly popular in Japan thanks to NEC including it in their PC-98s.

[@jessihawkins9116]

no they never made an adapter for bus to serial/ps2

[@waytostoned]

@@jessihawkins9116 I have 2 in my collection, dont spread fud.

[@jessihawkins9116]

@@waytostoned no it never happened. you are thinking serial to ps/2 or vice versa.

[@alecjahn]

Our first PS/2 mouse was of that physical design. I need to find it again... It's in some box, somewhere. I guess I also need to find the SNES mouse since the ball was missing when I got it, and the only ball I could find out of all of our mice that was the right size was from that old Microsoft mouse so I borrowed the ball but never returned it home.

[@olik136]

autocad is still too expensive... but don't worry- you also get ZERO support for it...

[@simontay4851]

Free if you torrent it.

[@olik136]

for us it was about 7000€ for the new licence (per copy) and now it is about 2000€ for the yearly "subscription" that lets you get the new version and you are able to use the programs at a second pc at home...support is not included, the new versions ALWAYS have major flaws, I have to pay for several apps in the package that I will NEVER use-- and a nice feature is that it takes a lot of space on your system drive (even when installed somewhere else) and good luck uninstalling the package- because you can't... you have to uninstall the 64 components (yes 64 components for like 4 apps) manually and when the day is over there is still some shit hiding on your drive....

[@olik136]

money is also free if you steal it.......

[@ComradeRachel]

I mean ya but if your a business or a professional using the software to make money then that is not really a option.

[@Hordes_Of_Nebulah]

It is bad when third party autodesk support forums are more useful than the actual help site. Half my time in civil 3d is spent digging through forums trying to figure out why a corridor or pipe network isn't working right. Or why the storm and sanitary analysis software works sometimes but not all the time. As for the subscription it is kinda nice having the newest version available but that also means new and exciting bugs in the system! Civil 3d 2019 fixed a number of things I didn't like in 2018 but presented plenty of new challenges. Before that my office had been on 2013 for years and at least it had familiar problems and we knew the bugs.

[@FastGadgets]

I loved my MS bus mouse. It felt great in the hand and was a quality mouse.

[@jaykay18]

Never had a bus mouse, but I did have a Mouse Systems Optical Serial Mouse with 3 buttons on my PCjr. The optics required a special reflective metal mouse pad, and the serial connector had a jack for power in off a separate wall wart. I wonder what versions of Windows would still understand that bus card and be able to use it. I'd expect anything before XP likely would work since those OS's basically run on top of DOS. Chances are you'd be hard-pressed to find a system with ISA slots that will run Windows 10, but I know serial mice still work on 10.

[@chrisjamesr77]

I think LGR did a review of that mouse.

[@Caseytify]

That was my first mouse. Used it with a Compaq Portable.

[@Tangobaldy]

There was a larger connector too before ps2 like a din plug

[@vwestlife]

That was the AT/XT keyboard connector, not for a mouse.

[@CB3ROB-CyberBunker]

DIN-5 for keyboards... yes. not for mouses. "abused rs232" db25 and db9 and mouse bus (same size but not the same pins as minidin) for mouses. 'before' the ps2 minidin used for both mouses and AT protocol keyboards (actually the DIN keyboards are still in use to this day, as they simply suck less, don't fall out of the connectors, and have a sturdy well shielded connection and a working protocol which doesn't require fucktard 'licenses' like usb). it's the thing to go for if you want to sell products that -work-. the DIN-5 keyboard standard is used both with the XT keyboard protocol and the AT keyboard protocol tho. that's a bit of a compatibility issue although most keyboards autodetect and support both. to keep it nice and confusing for the user, the DIN-5 was also used for the cassette port on the original ibm pc (pre-XT) (excellent screw up ibm ;)

[@CB3ROB-CyberBunker]

those microsoft mouses as depicted in the video actually mostly came with a DB9 connector fitted and conversion cable to mousebus and DB25 in the box. (as well as z-soft paintbrush and the mickeysoft mouse driver disk) the isa card wasn't included with the db9 model.

[@CB3ROB-CyberBunker]

things were damn expensive too at i think 299 guilders at the time. something like that it was :P

[@vwestlife]

The IBM PC's cassette port used the same connector and pinout as the TRS-80, so they were simply using an existing standard.

[@marktubeie07]

Nice Al Stewart tag at the end!

[@kareno8634]

Thanks! was racking my brain to remember Who. 'Load' lifted.

[@marktubeie07]

Karen O. You are welcome :)

[@s4ndwichMakeR]

I think the trick with the Paintbrush text tool is to actually draw a box for the pre-entered text to fill in instead of clicking somewhere.

[@DavidWonn]

I think this ZSoft Paintbrush software is what made the .pcx image format popular at least for a brief period of time, until the .gif superseded it in the mid-90s. Paintbrush in Windows 3.x and NT 3.x fully support reading and creating new .pcx files. Windows 95 Paint opens them but doesn’t generally support creating new .pcx files. Windows NT 4 also has an Imaging software that views .pcx files.

[@ObiWanBillKenobi]

I was given a KLH model 195 computer a while ago and it had this port but came without a mouse. I was very confused until I learned about this mouse.

[@SeleniumGlow]

I'm sure you had to click and drag a bounding box for the text tool to properly place the text. Just one click meant that the horizontal length was set to 1 pixel causing all the characters to warp to the next line, giving an effect of vertical text.

[@Kenny-bw2cz]

I love your contents... Due to your videos and some other KZbinrs I have been working on some retro projects

[@Gooberslot]

Watching you install the software sure was nostalgic.

[@beanwithbacon]

I remember receiving this exact same mouse for Xmas in I think 1989. Thanks for the major bit of nostalgia.

[@gregkarris6869]

Wow, CNIB - awesome... If you call MS or walk into an MS Store, they'll probably honor the warranty - you'll get just a basic MS USB Mouse as a replacement... ;)

[@Gameboygenius]

What a buggy PoS software that looks to be. I think what happened with the text is that the width was reset to 0 when you selected a new font. You were probably supposed to first select the font, then use the text tool. It look like it had handles on the sides and corners for resizing the box, just like in modern MS Paint. The out of memory error was probably due to not deallocating the memory of the current image before creating a new one.

[@vwestlife]

I realized that and tried to grab one of the handles to expand the text box, but all I got was the "hand" cursor to move it.

[@Gameboygenius]

Yeah I saw that although I think you only tried a corner one. Maybe you needed to use the left or right one to adjust the width, while the corners act as "move".

[@twocvbloke]

Yet another thing ol' Billy Boy Gates bought out and killed off, the Bus Mouse interface... :P

[@CGQuarterly]

Nice! I was hoping that you'd end up making this video.

[@lemagreengreen]

Isn't it amazing all the documentation/junk you used to get, even with simple peripherals like this? Of course, this mouse was probably quite expensive at the time :)

[@Blackadder75]

our first Genius mouse was also in 1989, you got DrGenius DrHalo and a bunch of other software. I think it was about $75. They had to bundle at least a draw program as most people wouldn't have much use for a mouse yet. kids loved it, my sisters had 0 interest in the PC but once we had the mouse they wanted to make drawings all the time. Which interrupted my game time so in hindsight it was a bad purchase :D

[@DigiFootageFX]

It's amazing to think that even in the late 80s a mouse was considered a novel luxury for computer use. That's just mind-blowing to me that you would literally have DOS programs which did not support a mouse as late as 1988! The 90s was truly a renaissance of computer development. It was the decade of digital progression and widespread acceptance. Things like this are so damn nostalgic. I'm glad to have grown up when I did and have memories of those days, but still be alive now when things have progressed to where it is.

[@jessihawkins9116]

you must be a millennial. everything that you did command wise such as drop down menus and clicking buttons could be done faster by the tab, cursor and spacebar/return keys. Even windows didn’t “require” a mouse.

[@BilisNegra]

The more you go into the video, the more you wonder how ridiculously expensive this must have been at the time.

[@hakemon]

I still have my InPort ISA card,. Used it with a Micro Solutions trackball back in the day. I'd love to have a new CST trackball (basically a modern USB Microsolutions), especially since using a computer is a little more harder with my surgery, but alas, I don't have a hundred bucks to be spending on a CST trackball.

[@ostsan8598]

I wasn't expecting Kevin and the Chipmunks to make an appearance in this video.

[@raymondleggs5508]

It's amazing how computers have changed throughout the years. I remember the tandy computers i used at school in the first grade. II think they were already 5 or 6 years old back in 1995 or 96

[@charlesdorval394]

Oh wow, I totally had forgotten about those! What a blast from the past ! Serial mouse with a scroll wheel? Fancy! ;)

[@VSigma725]

That connector for the mouse reminds me of the Sega Genesis A/V connectors!

[@jessihawkins9116]

no

[@bxdanny]

I remember getting a copy of the original PC Paintbrush program from ZSoft with my first IBM-compatible PC. It looked quite similar to this Microsoft-branded version. ZSoft created the .PCX file format.

[@TechTimeWithEric]

One thing that always amazes me is how often we can find completely unopened computer products from that decade. Back in those days buying a computer was about the equivalent of buying a car. You'd think that if someone paid that kind of money for something, they'd actually use it. Yes, I get that some of the stuff may be NOS, but still of it you can find with original receipts

[@Blackadder75]

consumers probably opened and used it 99,9% of the time, most of these finds come from corporate offices, where they would keep a few copies of stuff in storage to quickly replace a broken item. But then when the computers got upgraded, like usb the old extras were worthless, and never used.

[@Rivenworld]

You need to stop sniffing that Helium mate, it's no good for you lol.

[@jeepguy95]

My dad had a standard Microsoft Mouse that looked like this one on his c. 1994 Windows 3.1.1-equipped Gateway 2000 system, not sure if it included Paintbrush or not (I don't think it did, but it had AUTOCAD). It was a PS/2 mouse I believe as well.

[@derekchristenson5711]

I remember seeing this kind of mouse port on a computer or two that was not mine, back in the day, but I never owned one. Neat!

[@northhankspin]

I think my dad had an interface bus mouse for his Vandex Headstart. And that's funny, The whole computer evolved around the slot panels.

[@jessihawkins9116]

@mipmipmipmipmip I think magnavox eventually bought the headstart name

[@Halterung01]

Are you still planning on making a video of the DIY luggable (the one with the german keyboard layout)?

[@vwestlife]

Yes, eventually.

[@Halterung01]

Cool! Thanks for your great content.

[@xddbotnet1370]

Those tall round can buzzers aren't actually piezoelectric, just a coil with a metal membrane on top. I know because it's easy to destroy them while trying to desolder with excessive heat.

[@hgbugalou]

Man I don't miss dealing with IRQs. I do kind of miss peripherals that came with their own expansion cards.

[@kbhasi]

11:19 "…from the backup copy of your Setup disk" Wow, it actually knows it had been copied? Wow. I'm guessing it uses similar techniques to copy-protection mechanisms on program and game disks. 17:08 That reminds me of how windows are positioned in TWM (it was done entirely manually!) Also, it probably expects you to DRAG to select an area.

[@vwestlife]

The disks are not copy protected. In fact the manual recommends making backup copies of the disks and then installing it from them. That way there is no chance of the setup process accidentally overwriting data on the original disks.

[@Lukeno52]

There was also, a little later on, the QuickPort, which Toshiba used with a few trackball solutions on laptops.

[@erichkohl9317]

Great video! I bought this exact same mouse in 1989 for my XT clone, then installed it into my 486 when I upgraded to that. By the time I had a Pentium, it was PS/2 all the way.

[@lameguy64]

Ah, now I know why my serial mouse at COM1 stops working whenever I try to access the modem at COM3. Didn't know COM1 and COM3 share interrupts. Despite Bus Mouse never catching on in the PC market, it ended up becoming the standard mouse interface for NEC PC-98 computers. My NEC PC-9821Lt laptop has a BusMouse port on it.

[@sersoft_corp]

Don't copy that floppy!

[@albear972]

Dang you! I had to get rid of my comment where I said that exact same thing too before reading old ones.

[@Spyd77]

That mouse drawing at 5:35 remembered about Windows 3.1's tutorial.

[@44CT232]

I have a 286 desktop computer from around 1990 that has a bus mouse port built-in on the motherboard. I'm hoping someday to find a suitable mouse to go with it. But I guess a serial mouse will have to do for now :P

[@RobotPorter]

I miss certain things about computing in that era. But I don't miss the endless fiddling. Yeesh. Brought back memories though.

[@yooverthere]

The mouse was so shiny!

[@WafflezGaming]

That mouse connector looks oddly like a sega genesis model 2 av out connector.

[@budude2]

I seem to recall that Logitech had their own interface as well - it looked like a PS2 mouse but had different pin layouts - - could be wrong though...

[@Caseytify]

It had the same connector. I have a bus card for a Logitech device in my spares box. The trackball it came with died a long time ago.

[@Ice_Karma]

Neat. PCX was the first graphics file format I ever implemented from scratch, in Turbo Pascal 5.5, because ZSoft would send you a booklet with the specification for free. XD

[@MindsEyeTHPS]

3:22 - Sounds like the ollie/jump from metal sound in the _Tony Hawk_ games.

[@kareno8634]

A Good Will find?

[@mr.nobody6829]

Someway, Micriosoft has interest in making human interface hardware.

[@themaritimegirl]

It looks like the text boxes had grab-handles so you could stretch it out and make the text horizontal. :P I like that style of Microsoft mouse; I'd like to find a serial version someday.

[@vwestlife]

Maybe I was in the wrong cursor mode or something, but I couldn't grab onto the grab handles -- the pointer just gave me the "hand" cursor which moved the whole thing around.

[@dglcomputers1498]

The connector looks like one that was used by Acorn Computers on their Archimedes line up to the RIsc PC.

[@markcovington8159]

Hey VWestlife. How to manage to have part of this video go in fast forward as part of the video?

[@vwestlife]

iMovie allows you to speed up or slow down video clips.

[@markcovington8159]

Can I find iMovie on ebay? If so, what's the price for a copy of iMovie?

[@dukctape]

it comes default on all Mac computers, and only works on macintosh OS, AFAIK

[@jamiemarchant]

May have confused this for a normal mouse if I saw it at the thrift store out of the box.

[@theandnewman]

The problem you had with creating a new file in Paint was that you tried to save the old file instead for discarding it with no. To make it type the text horizontally you should drag to the side, not just click.

[@Ale.K7]

Love that old SIMMs!

[@Felecc]

Magic cooking show tricks. Nice dude :DD

[@fionathefox8945]

I had a mouse that looked like a PS2 port mouse in the early 2000s... and when I plugged it into a PS2 port? The wire literally burned and I pulled it out and it melted into my skin and I still have burnt rubber from it under my skin to this day. I have no idea what kind of mouse it was but the port looked like a PS2 port to 13 year old me... and stupid me plugged it in. So maybe there was another entirely diff one? It LOOKED like an average microsoft mouse too... that's whats odd and it burnt out my PS2 port so I had to use a USB one early on when most used PS2.

[@DuckGWR]

Those 256k SIMs are... kinda hilarious

[@ellisgl]

I had this on a PC back in 95/96, and tried to switch over to Linux. Couldn't get it to work, so it was a couple more years till I had a Linux box running in my house.

[@siggi1956]

I have one unopened! Is this worth Anything?

[@jannevaatainen]

Paintbrush here seems more sophisticated than Windows Paintbrush. I have the same exact mouse, but no controller for it, so it's pretty much useless.

[@jessihawkins9116]

it’s not useless with the controller card 🤔

[@helthuismartin]

I love these old computers.Ibought last week a Toshiba T1000 from 1987 bud the LCD screen doesnt work.Every time i get a black barr in the screen .

[@rillloudmother]

OMG yeah, IRQ conflicts. Forgot about those for a minute...

[@JorgeDo]

COM1 and COM3 shared the same IRQ 4. COM2 and COM4 shared IRQ 3. Even and odd, that was the rule of thumb. You can't use 1,3 nor 2,4 ports simultaneously

[@jozef97]

Hi VWestlife. I love your videos and have been wondering for a while what field you work in / what you do for a living. You mind sharing some insight?

[@TaylorMade511]

In 1989 MacIntosh had this beat by 1,000 miles.

[@jackfrost884]

I didnt know serial was used for anything but printers?!

[@vwestlife]

It has been used for lots of things. There were even some serial port webcams.

[@themaritimegirl]

My Mom had a digital camera that connected to the serial port. :P

[@brentboswell1294]

The serial port was primarily intended for modems...Apple was the only manufacturer that used the serial port for printers. Even at that, you could buy a Centronics parallel port card for non-Apple printers on the Apple ][.

[@GregoryKowalkowski]

GOOD STUFF - GOOD 'OL DAYS - THUMBS UP!

[@darrados496]

9:34 That just made my day.

[@kylehungerford7746]

Great video what's the music in the background of the video

[@vwestlife]

My background music is always just whatever was playing on the radio at the time, usually on WQXR (Classical) or WBGO (Jazz).

[@kylehungerford7746]

Thanks for the info have a great day : )

[@daltononeill5026]

There's a 5th blue tooth

[@lordmmx1303]

when I saw the memory modules, i thought thay you expanded memory from 1MB to 32MB. and when you said from 1MB to 2MB I almost died... :D

[@jessihawkins9116]

I had a butt old 386 machine that took simms that just had sip pins that plugged into the motherboard. I’ve never seen them on any other machine.

[@georgez8859]

Very Cool, Thanks for Sharing

[@SegaSaturn94]

Sankyu Little mouse !

[@yosuhara]

WTF?! This DOS Paintbrush soft is more advanced than that crap Microsoft put in their Windows OS!

[@pessolanostudios]

You forgot to mention the wireless ones of today, Or i guess thats just an extension to the usb versions.

[@farhanatashiga3721]

Most wireless mouse need an usb Receiver to work so yes it's just an extension of usb.

[@Pogman999]

You can get Bluetooth mice which aren't (necessarily) connected via USB

[@TheTrueVoiceOfReason]

You should try IrfanView for your oddball files as it reads a metric S-ton of image, audio, video and other file types. You just need to make sure you get the add-on zip file that contains the code to read them. I have it on my Win98, XP, and Win7 machines. I even use it at work sometimes when I need to do some basic edits to import image files into AutoCrash, I mean CAD.

[@vwestlife]

I didn't need it, because as I mentioned, FastStone Image Viewer supports PCX files, and that's the program I already use.

[@TheTrueVoiceOfReason]

Absolutely understood, but just throwing that out there for anyone to consider in the future. :)

[@andygozzo72]

i have one of those busmouse cards, not a microsoft, though, cant remember what.., and think i do have a busmouse somewhere..

[@compactc9]

Installation done by Alvin the chipmunk. LOL I always get a giggle when people speed up the video and their voice sounds like that!

[@louiehorwood660]

You should send off the form just to see if Microsoft respond, might surprise them.

[@DalmationProductions]

That music in the back tho lol

[@jhonwask]

Are you listening to harpsichord music?

[@vwestlife]

Yes.

[@DavidAragon13]

Or you could buy a new HP mini-form PC with a PS\2 and serial port adapter that goes into the expansion slot to run a PS\2 mouse and keyboard that I am using right now. Now I can use my 2008 PS\2 keyboard and a 1998 Compaq ball mouse as they had intended.

[@Computist40]

AutoCAD, more like AutoCRAP. Why do I call it that? Because I deal with this software day to day at work and it's very piggy.

[@TheRadiogeek]

Wow you talk fast. You need to cut back on the coffee. 😊

[@jpolar394]

All of that paperwork and instructions that come with it and today you can buy a new phone and you don't even get instructions.

[@oligrant8536]

The Logimouse c7 works with this!

[@napomania]

strange the fact that while you installing that mouse you are trasforming yourself in a mouse (or in donald duck maybe )))))

[@ImTheReal]

Good times ^_^

[@paunchstevenson]

Pica is pronounced "pike-uh" (not "peek-uh").

[@stevef6392]

omg, liek, computers were such a pain to use back then.

[@pentiummmx2294]

i have that same mouse but it's a serial ps/2 compatible version