It seems to be sending about 160 packets per second -
anyone know how
well that compares to the speed of a typical mouse?
Well, depending on whose "typical" you use. I would say 160
packets/sec should be plenty.
Sun mice are normally 1200 baud (ie, 120 data bytes per sec) and are
either three or five bytes per sample, depending on which protocol the
mouse in question speaks - hence, 40 or 24 samples/sec max, depending
on the protocol.
Some Sun mice can be fairly trivially jiggered to run at 9600 baud
instead of 1200 baud; with matching software hackery, you can get a
*much* more responsive mouse (at the price of more CPU time spent
handling it). I've done this with one of my mice and it produces a
very much snappier feel to interactive mouse use (max 320 or 192
samples/sec depending on protocol - I haven't checked which protocol
that mouse uses).
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