The website OldMouse.com used to have a page talking about it, but for some strange reason, they have removed it! Only a few days ago, Google still had cache of the page but they have since also removed it.
Thankfully, Archive.org still has it, at least as of the time of this post.
This is what the page said:
Xerox-Microsoft Hybrid Mouse
This mouse inspires speculation about the feedback Xerox gave Microsoft for the mouse it commissioned.
This Xerox mouse for sale on eBay by user vintagecomputermuseum appears at first glance as Microsoft's so-called grey eyed mouse simply rebranded for Xerox in custom coffee colors. The Microsoft grey-eyed mouse was released in 1985. Apparently Xerox commissioned this custom mouse after abandoning its own Xerox 8010 (so-called Star) optical mouse of 1981 origin. The custom connector plug that looks like an RJ45 would not work on a regular PC.
But flip the Xerox mouse over and its ball and housing retain the style of Microsoft's earlier so-called green eyed mouse (developed in 1982 and introduced in 1983). This Xerox mouse wears the 1985 Microsoft mouse's shell on the 1983 Microsoft mouse's mechanism.
The grey-eyed Microsoft Mouse 5.0 of 1985 release has a rubber coated steel ball held in place by a round plastic retainer ring that latches into a round track. The older mouse has a bare steel ball held in place by a screw tab on its retainer ring, just like the ball housing on this Xerox branded mouse.
It came with the Xerox/Toshiba 8088/XT clone that my family bought in 1985, and plugged into the right side of the matching Xerox XT-style keyboard, with the F-keys on the left. I'm not sure how old it was at the time, but the mouse was very unusual for IBM-compatibles at the time. The whole machine had a nice, modern look to it, with a low profile. It had two side-by-side 360 kB 5.25" half-height floppies, built-in CGA, I/O, and a 10 MB hard drive and MFM controller that may have been added by vendor. Up to 3 ISA cards could be stacked sideways off a riser. Another peculiar thing is that the 4.77 MHz CPU was made by Toshiba in white ceramic. The mouse tracked very well, better than Amiga's, I think, which was my only comparison, and it's very durable. The driver was tmouse.com.
ReplyDeleteAlso it was an RJ11, not RJ45.
ReplyDeleteYours was an RJ11? The one in the photo is RJ45, and the one I have here has an RJ45 as well ;)
DeleteIt was around 3.5 decades ago, but I have a memory of someone plugging a phone into the keyboard as a joke. It might have been entirely imaginary, or even a dream, but it sure seems like a real memory.
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