PS/2 mice and MOL

[Brian Ruth]

Hi all,

This is just a slight problem with MOL which I keep on meaning to bring up,
then forget about. Anyway, probably worth a mention...

...I'm using MOL on a number of IBM PReP RS/6000 boxes. These all have PS/2
keyboard and mouse interfaces. I've noticed that when running MOL in console
mode (via the framebuffer display), the mouse will often fail the first time
MOL is started - the mouse pointer appears in the top left of the Mac display,
as normal, but as soon as I move the mouse, the pointer shoots over to the far
right edge of the screen, and is then uncontrollable - moving the mouse only
results in the pointer moving up and down, whilst remaining stuck at the far
right of the display. The only way out is to crash out of MOL using Ctrl-C and
then restarting it. On the restart, the mouse pointer then usually works fine
under MOL.

I'm assuming the problem could be something like MOL not initialising the
mouse driver, or perhaps assuming it is in a different state. I think (though
I could be wrong) that starting up and closing down X immediately before
starting MOL seems to help, as perhaps that resets the PS/2 bus.

This seems to affect every version of MOL I've tried. I'm currently using the
latest BK tree version.

Any thoughts?

Brian.