"Jo-Anne" wrote:

I recently posted about my dead Contour optical mouse, whose cable had a
broken wire--one of five. Given the way the five wires were crimped into a
piece of plastic, it looked like it would be impossible to fix.

I also, however, have several old PS2 Contour mice whose rollers had gotten
clogged with cat fur. It turns out that some of the cables have the same
five-wire configuration.

I'd like to try connecting the unbroken PS2 cable to the optical mouse. What
sort of USB to PS2 connector will make Windows XP recognize the mouse as
Plug-and-Play? Or is that even possible?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

The mouse itself has to sense which type of connection you use (USB or
PS/2) to adjust to using that connection. A simple USB-to-PS/2 adapter
will not magically make a USB-only mouse suddenly work on a PS/2
connector. If the mouse doesn't support both USB and PS/2 protocols
then you have to buy an *active* converter into which you plug the USB
mouse and then plug the converter into the PS/2 port. These are pretty
expensive ($80+) so you might as well as look as buying a new mouse.

Does the mouse you want to fix actually state in its specifications from
its maker that it supports both USB and PS/2 connections? The *mouse*
has to have the logic to sense the connection type and switch between
the different hardware protocols.

I'm not sure if you are trying to fix the old mouse that was USB so it
now uses PS2 (and then whether or not you intend to plug it into a USB
port through an adapter), or if you intend to use an old PS2 mouse and
make it work on a USB port.

Active adapter for USB to PS/2 ($145):
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_1...=SPM6517889302

What hardware protocols did the old broken mouse support?
- USB only.
- PS/2 only.
- Both USB and PS/2.