The Forgotten Ancestor of Modern Mice

Before USB, your computer mouse required a dedicated expansion card to function. These bus mice connected directly to the system motherboard, bypassing standard ports to handle data processing themselves.

During the 1980s, standard serial ports were often too slow or occupied by other devices, prompting the creation of the bus mouse interface. Users had to plug a specialized controller card into an empty slot inside their PC just to get a cursor moving. This hardware-heavy design eventually vanished once integrated ports became fast and reliable. It stands as a quirky reminder of how difficult it once was just to point and click on a screen.