Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:

> We just acquired at a yard sale a mouse with two buttons on top, a small
> wheel between them, and another narrow button on the left side.  Is this a
> 3-button wheel mouse and if not, what is it?  How do we set this up for
> Xvesa, ln -s /dev/???? /dev/mouse  ?  Will this also take care of svgalib
> mouse?  I only have experience so far with PS/2 (default in Xvesa) and
> serial mice.
> 
> Sindi
> 

A web search on wheel mouse, linux, and xvesa produced the following 
information.

A wheel mouse is like a 5-button mouse but the scroll wheel substitutes 
for the 4th and 5th buttons (which move the scrollbar?)

/dev/psaux,5 for a PS/2 wheel mouse

In Xf86config you need to modify 
Section "Input Device"
Identifier "Mouse"
/dev/psaux  [or psaux,5?]
Option "ZAxisMapping"  "4 5"
Option "Buttons"   "3"

DamnSmallLinux is now set to use the wheel mouse if found, when you 
specify PS/2 mouse, in Xvesa (?).

Someone was playing with Xvesa and xev and reports that "Xvesa does not 
generate any events for any of the side buttons or the scroll wheel" 
except that depressing the wheel is like hitting the Enter key.

Another site said that in order to get Kdrive Xvesa to work with a wheel 
mouse you need to modify the driver mouse.c (and presumably compile Xvesa 
yourself).

I don't claim to have understood or correctly summarized any of the above.

I might try this with Xsvga driver once (in a computer where that only 
works in 256 colors), modifying "Input Device" section.  My partner is 
intrigued by the gadget, fifty cents at a yard sale.  

You can also avoid using the scrollbar by typing Shift-PageUp or
Shift-PageDown to scroll one page at a time on a 101-key or more keyboard.  
(On my 84-key keyboard I needed to remap it so PgUp and PgDn worked the
same way).