I fixed my computer

Never hurts to have more spares. Well, until you need to find them, that is.

"Dave Hinz" wrote: Never hurts to have more spares. (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Check Dave Newell's post. He has some old tubes he may want to sell. ;-)

Don't laugh, there's some high-end sound card that uses "Fire Bottles".

Well, now I broke it again. Damn! I was tired...my mug of coffee teetered and slowly tipped onto the keyboard. The keyboard survived but the mouse only works in the vertical direction. Now I'm glad I kept all those Sun keyboards and mice. Back to using one of those Sun optical mice until my mechanical mouse dries out. Those old optical mice once looked the coolest things ever, and still look cool. Pity the pads slide around on the desk. I might have to fix this with some stick-on rubber feet.

Chris

Waitaminute. Are you telling me, that Sun, of all people, make a mouse that isn't Java Compatible?

Rough it up with some 80-grit or so sandpaper. (the rubber pads, not the desk). If that doesn't do, I may still have a stack of those, I'd have to check.

Dave

Nice pun. Didn't Sun once make some pizza box style machine which was nicknamed "Mr Coffee"? As I recall it almost matched SGI in terms of great colours, but not quite?

I don't think roughing up the pads will do much: they're foam. I've been meaning to buy a big pack of rubber feet for a while, so when I do I'll use some of those.

Best wishes,

Chris

For what it's worth...

I use a piece of 1/4" plywood that has been well varnished and sanded smooth. It works beautifully and reduces mouse droppings (on the ball) to a minimum.

Those foam pads tend to accumulate a lot of junk.

Richard

Ah, there's been a slight misunderstanding here! The foam is on the bottom of my aluminium mouse pad. It's one of those which has a graticule engraved on the surface.

Chris

According to Christopher Tidy :

And -- the older styles of these, if the pad is rotated 90 degrees, will make the mouse appear to be broken. it will work in one axis, but not in the other. (People who knew this used to use it to "reserve" a workstation in a college computer lab. :-)

This works with the older mice with two "holes". The newer ones, with only a single hole require a different mousepad, and there is a Sun logo in one corner of these.

Enjoy, DoN.

Yes, I've got the single hole kind. I like the design. If only the pad didn't slide around on my desk. I might glue a sheet of rubber to the base.

Chris

I've stuck velcro to the back of one, and to a round leather object about 5" diameter made of two pieces of leather stitched together and filled with lead shot (a desk paperweight, I think) to make it somewhat stable on the arm of my Lay-Z-Boy chair, which is where I normally use the computer, with the keyboard in my lap.

Right now, I'm using one of the ball-type sun mice directly on the upholstery, and amazingly enough, it seems to not clog up with cat hair, even with both cats in full shed mode at the moment.

Enjoy, DoN.