Digging in a
huge tangle of wires today I found an odd looking Honeywell
mouse. Instead of a ball, it has two wheels on the bottom angled so that
one turns on x axis and the other y axis movements. Otherwise it looks
like
an old PC serial mouse, is it?
Dunno, but Doug Englebart's original rodentia were made in this fashion...
The Honeywell mouse is not the same. It's wheels are nearly parallel to
the bottom surface of the mouse, rather than perpendicular. But they
are tilted slightly, one on each axis. The idea is to keep crud from
being pulled into the mouse. Some other vendors OEM'd these or licensed
the design, for instance some DEC hockeypuck mice work this way.