> This is more-or-less what I was wondering about when I said "given an
> X server that can use /dev/whatever...".  With XFree86, as I'm sure
> most people know, it looks by default for /dev/mouse.  You just make
> that a link to the serial device (/dev/tty<foo>) which your serial
> mouse is on, or you can use /dev/psaux or something for PS/2 mice,

Yup. Normal XFree86 does it this way. For serial mice it interprets
the bytes from a serial port according to the protocol you set
in the config file (Micro$oft, Mouse-systems, etc.)

> etc.; I don't know what is really under the hood with this, but I
> always assumed that you could probably point this at any (character)
> device you wanted, as long as it spit out raw bytes that matched
> what was expected for the given mouse protocol.  I admit that I have
> not tried to do this in real life...

I have.. On my Amiga running Linux/68k I have used a 3 Button
serial PC mouse for a while. Now I use a 'normal' 3-button 
Amiga-mouse. All I needed to do was link /dev/mouse to the
correct device and set the protocol in XF86config

> Probably not: as I said, I'd tend to want to use some other serial port
> instead if available.  Does the console support flow control?  I thought
> it did.  In any case, dropping a few mouse characters might not be too
> noticeable...

Probably would 'jump' a bit..

								Bye Arno.

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