Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hoptoad!tim
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Cleaned my mouse... Broke my mouse?
Message-ID: <9422@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 28 Dec 89 20:54:24 GMT
References: <21510@mimsy.umd.edu>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco
Lines: 34

In article <21510@mimsy.umd.edu> folta@tove.umd.edu (Wayne Folta) writes:
>I just cleaned what appeared to be some scum off of the rollers of my mouse.
>Unfortunately, the mouse now has serious problems tracking vertically.  I
>fear that the "scum" was in fact purposely put there by Apple to provide
>traction for the ball.
>
>Should the rollers in an Apple mouse be perfectly clean, or should they have
>something on them?  If I just ruined them, is there anything I can do to
>redeposit the appropriate material?

I'm not sure if the scum or fuzz is canonical or not.  I took a lot of
it off the metal roller on the right side on my ADB mouse from Apple a
few weeks ago, because the mouse kept catching on horizontal movement.
I had to go back a few times and make sure I'd really gotten all of it
off; if you leave any, then it is likely to catch on the roller
mounting.  Now, I have no problems.  Make sure it's all off; rotate the
roller by hand to make sure.  But *don't* remove the black stuff in a
thin layer on the rollers; they provide traction.  If this is the scum
you mean, all I can say is, whoops.

>(By problems with tracking I mean: I can move the mouse horizontally as fast
>as I want and the cursor moves.  However, moving it vertically fast (to get
>to a menu, for instance) results in the cursor moving only a few inches, or
>moving in a jerky manner.)

This does sound like what I saw when a piece of fuzz got caught in the
roller mounting, but it could also mean a lack of traction from taking
off the thin black layer.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com

"Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet, thought
 Gibreel Farishta.  Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in
 God." -- Salman Rushdie, THE SATANIC VERSES