How was it using this back then?

super annoying, had to clean it several times per gaming session

Based obsessive bro.

>More reliable, since it relied on the movement of the ball, and not the laser which could make mistakes.
>things that bizzaro Yea Forums said

really? I remember all the 90s geeks who were into gaming praising laser mouses over ball mouses. They all claimed laser mouses are almost always more precise.

I agree, fellow weirdo.

i sliced the rubber of one once, had a cool steel ball inside

Bullshit. They didn't need to be cleaned THAT often.

I'm a high sensitivity player, the laser doesn't make mistakes unless you've got awireless mouse, a shittymouse, a weird surface, or a shitty mobo/usb bus.

Dont respond to zoomers pretending to be boomers.

They were terrible, but there was a nice feedback when moving them that laser mice don't have. Like a dragging feeling instead of everything being silky smooth.

maybe you're just more neat than the two of us.

He failed to mention the first versions of laser mice. Today obviously they are better. Back then it was a valid argument

It's not 1998, sweaty

The ball gets wacky and the arrow shakes all over the place and barely do what you want it to do.

Just how big of a slob are you that you would need to clean it multiple times in one day?

You had to take the ball out ever week and scrape the dust off the rolling bar sensor things.

It was alright. I hated the mac single button mice. The ball didn't bother me. It glided very smoothly.
Kinda miss it now.

I miss destroying things out of curiosity of seeing what is inside them.
>cut open a baseball to see whats inside
>cut open a golfball to see whats inside
>cut open Stretch Armstrong to see whats inside and instantly realize Ive made a huge mistake

They were unreliable. Occasionally the ball would slip or whatever. It was good enough to operate microsoft word or whatever, but not good for games.

I fucking hate it. They would go wonky as soon as the inside is covered by junk
>just clean it lmao
As opposed to not needing to clean it ever? Thank god for laser mouses. I will pick a $1 disco mouse over any trackball mouses.

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very fluid if you maintained it. since it's an analog device theres no digicancer like angle snapping.

fucking dreadful. clean it like every half hour or else you are fucked
ironically, you are correct. its how i came to love cleaning my controllers if they got gunky from friends

I just showered!

these were heavy as fuck but you were more precise in FPS games I think, playing RTS was a bitch tho

This, at first they'd be good for.. a year or two, then you'd constantly be cleaning them.
when I build my DOS/95/98 retro computers a year or three ago the first thing I did was buy optical mice for them. I love old hardware, but not THAT much.

What about this save icon?

Attached: images (3).jpg (554x554, 24K)

Who remembers this bad boy?

Attached: Super_nes_mouse_09.jpg (3648x2736, 2.46M)

I remember having to lift and redrag the mouse several times because the cursor wasn't where I wanted it thanks to that fucking ball.

It wasn't very fun.

Were you playing in the dirt? I used a mouse like that for about 10 years and I barely cleaned it at all

>laser mouse
>not needing cleaning
lmao kid, you will not have your mom replace your broken toys every 6 months forever.

>playing doom 2
>haven't cleaned mouse in months because lazy
>every time i try to aim my mouse skips over enemy and i miss
dark times

It even came with a special cleaning tool.

I still have to clean the rubber feet on modern mice

how much of an obsessive cleaning discorded do you have that you DIDN'T?

for what purpose?

There were tons of forum elitists that defended the ball when laser was taking over. Think about that and laugh.

itt: huge fat slobs clogging up their input devices with cheeto dust

Suddenly I remember playing quake with my classmates in the school computer room

No because literally no one had it.

not worth it desu, had to see a shrink for over a decade over that shit

Mario Paint

>one roller breaks
gg

Attached: 1556286424992.gif (416x307, 2.58M)

In English, please.

I liked lifting that mouse slightly and rolling the ball around on the table without the mouse itself touching the table. Very comfy

>doom 2
>mouse

hang yourself newfriend

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to play nobunaga's ambition of course

I made one typo. Disorder instead of discorder.

>2 buttons, no mouse wheel
>still feels more advanced than the max's one button

>tfw the ball is TOO CLEAN and the rubber sticks to shit and makes the cursor jump around

Attached: 1458797193324.jpg (599x563, 74K)

Damn now that I'm trying to replicate that, I can do that with a laser too. Not as comfy though

How do you clean it?

The ball was annoying as fuck. If it got crud on it, you had to scrape it off or else you had to repeatedly lift your mouse when moving to "reset" it.

I always loved scraping the black stuff off the wheels and eating it.

>tfw I still do it sometimes on laser mouse

>be me in middle school
>have to turn in an essay
>microsoft word essay file is too large to fit on a single save icon
>have to use two
>they won't let you just print it

Attached: yuck.png (551x491, 261K)

iconic

i have kind of had a recent revelation regarding this. it turns out the answer is using an old school style fabric mousepad. the computer at my job has a plastic mouse pad, and i always need to constantly clean my mice feet or i get a lot of friction/drag that gets worse over time. HOWEVER my mouse at home never needs the feet cleaned, always a smooth glide, and i use a fabric mousepad at home so that's really the only difference. i suppose i need to take into account the material each mouse's feet are made of... so mostly a theory at this point

That still doesn't make sense. Someone with OCD would be cleaning it constantly.

I still have a goddamn cheap logitech b100 for 7 fucking years and it still works despite I never touched the inside of it.

put it in your mouth

Just pop it in your mouth for a few minutes and suck all of the tasty gunk off.

I could never get all that stuff out.

I almost never have to do that, don't think I've done that in over a year, yet I'm a dirty slob that had to constantly clean his ball mouse.

Annoying as fuck, always sticking, had to make sure your mouse mat was perfect, filling with dust and shit.

I do not miss the days of these BS mouses and fucking dial up internet

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zoomer confirmed. only 90s poorfags used the keyboard only. hell i even played Wolf 3D with a mouse back then.

John Romero said the best way to play is by using a mouse since the Wolf 3D days, you ignorant pleb

no, if you have a cleaning OCD you'd be cleaning your desk, your mouse pad and your hands all the time so your ball will never get gunk and grease on it.

On a logical level i know that I have used them but I just don't remember.

>no one had mario paint
plebs

Looks cool but I'm sure it fucking sucks

Kinda sorta relevant to this thread, but super amusing regardless

youtube.com/watch?v=biRGy2pMvIc

Hey, me too. We could be brothers, hehe. :)

The only thing I miss of that era of computing was Operating Systems, far more user friendly than what Windows puts out today

still better than any touch/trackpad ever made

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Adequate. Everyone played Quake with these, and back then I sure was infinitely better at it than I am today.
Having toothpicks next to your tower for the sole purpose of picking out gunk was less fun. Infrared mice were a much needed upgrade.

>he didnt play doom with a flight stick
retard

Kinda crazy that it only holds 1.44 MB. My dad used to went to some internet cafe, downloaded something like a flash game or a free antivirus, and bring it home by using dozens of diskette.

Man I love these mice with the trackball on top, I gotta dig my old Trackman out of storage one of these days.

>he doesn't play doom using his toaster
youtube.com/watch?v=vI7tWd7B3iI
I am kinda skeptical this is real

Holy shit how old are you people still here?

o shit
i should have one somewhere

>be in middle school in the 90s
>in computer lab
>dumb ass classmate whines to teacher that is mouse is hard to use
>teacher lets him switch computers
>i have same problem but am smart enough to clean my own mouse out w/o bothering teacher

fuck off zoomer.

>all the gunk comes off in one pull as a single strip

it felt great 2bh

>only 1.44mb
my first computer (intel 486) had like 4mb of ram.

Best was releasing pikachu

30 reporting in
zoomers are the cancer that is killing Yea Forums

Obvious zoomer spotted.

same

THet were great for the first hour after you cleaned it and then they were shit, but you really didn't know how shit they were because there was no alternative, it's only until I got my first LED mouse that I knew how really fucking shit they were, holy fuck it was great gettign the Intellimouse and being able to use it on you bed or thigh etc and never having to clean it.

tl;dr they were shit, pic related was my first ball mouse

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if you had used it you would realize all the incredible fuckery that goes on with selecting the "top tier" mice today doesnt matter

the quake pros used these and they could still use one today and you would still not be able to touch them with them being 40+ years old

skill is still the only thing that matters as it always was

DONT COPY THAT FLOPPY

Oh shit I forgot about that.
There was always one computer with a mouse so bad the ball couldn't rotate at all.

Was always fun to take the ball out and play with it, nice and heavy.

>4mb
look at this spaceman over here doing shuttle calculations or some shit.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaksija_(computer)

>Memory 2-6KB RAM, 4-8KB ROM

>THet were great for the first hour after you cleaned it and then they were shit

zoomer post. I am mice were fine with being cleaned less than once a week

Complete garbage, there's a reason they don't make them anymore.

laser mice were shit back then

34 here, my parents are disappointed that i didn't pursue the american dream and chose to remain a bachelor manchild but fuck it

>Reload weapon in game
>Lift mouse, unscrew cap and clean the ball
>Put mouse back together before reload is finished

I REALLY don't miss using this piece of shit. You had to fucking clean it every other day.
Thank god those days are over.

yeah...

no

dust got stuck in the ball socket real fast, cleaning it got old
poor precision too.

But this isn't 1999

>zoomer post
i'm 42 and had been using ball mice since the 80's and know first hand how shit ball mice were compared to modern LED/Laser mice and how often they needed to be cleaned for completey smoothe operation, you think top quake players didn't clean their mice before a tourney?

there's a reason nobody uses ball mice anymore anymore

>I still use the mousepad
It's nice to have a hard surface to use a mouse on while in bed. All the other mousepad on sale tend to be the floppy ones meant to be put on an actual table.

Essential for King Arthur's World.

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there was something satisfying about taking the mouse ball out and just kind of rubbing it. maybe tossing it up in the air and catching it a few times. that was how i relaxed, like proto-ASMR or something. it was weird how heavy those balls were too you could legit injure someone if you threw it hard enough.

zoomer....

One thing consistent about these mouses are the balls are always in high quality. Even on the cheapest mouse, the ball is somehow built good. Sometimes I wonder if the ball itself cost higher than the mouse.

Optical version is available.

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My cousin lost the ball once and we didn't havs money for a new mouse so for 2 months we had to manually move the fucking axis controllers.

What did that even mean?

That the program was breaking the law and the police took it to jail.

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Everyone was mostly completely happy with normal ball mice, until the day optical mice were available, and we never looked back. Really they worked just fine. I could plug one in now and it wouldn't be a bit of a bother.

yes the balls were always the sturdiest heaviest part. actually i remember it being weird initially using the early optical mice that first came out, they were dramatically lighter in weight and it felt hard to aim with at first because of that.

Moving from ball to optical was pretty trivial on desk PCs.

The real pain in the ass was when laptop sellers stopped offering trackballs. Trackballs were very nice. Those touchpads that all laptops have are still complete ass, but vendors don't like having to offer phone support for everyone that didn't know how to clean their trackball.

well if they are going to update it at least add a damn scroll wheel so its useful for more than emulating 2 games.

oh nevermind i thought that was a USB clone, its an actual SNES peripheral.

2 million people bought Mario Paint
What are you smoking?

its kind of retarded to play Mario Paint these days on a SNES though. if you are going to want to screencap your finished art or put a finished song on youtube or whatever it makes more sense to just emulate it on PC. basically what kind of weird autist buys a SNES mouse to play Mario Paint on SNES in 2019?

What's inside Stretch Armstrong?

Honestly, I liked how inaccessible older tech was. It was the ultimate normalfag repellent. It didn't give a fuck how frustrated you got, you had to get gud with tech to use it well. Now:
>windows 10
>crashes yet again because of a bad/incompatible driver
>" :( Sowwy, computer no workie :((( "

Fuck Apple for bringing retards into tech and fuck everyone else for following them.

not that user but i think it had a weird clear goo inside

I think I remember it being something like corn starch, syrup, corcornflour etc or something, it was something safe and organic from what I remember

Condensed corn syrup.

corn syrup

yea alot of those early computer cases were not user friendly whatsoever. i have much sympathy for LGR on youtube who actually attempts to open up/fix some of those retro abominations

porn syrup

Terrible
But had a cool mechanical feel and you could do this neat thing where you could spin the ball up and take the mouse off the pad and the cursor would keep going.
Me and my dad used metho
Fucking hell it was almost daily

garmonbozia

>spin the ball up
You can still do it in 2019...

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As another anons said first gen laser mice like intelimouse and such hated dust and would regularly glitch out.
As someone who has a 12 years old case as my main so much this.
Airflow is godly because of no faggot glass front panel just 2 big 180mm fans

Looks like a vr controller.
I hated ball mice desu so uncomfortable I have big fingers and hands and these are all made for s o y hands

I still always use a foam/fabric mousepad, even after laser mice became common.
1. It ensures that the laser will detect the tabletop surface, if your mousing surface is a more reflective clean tabletop, the laser often reflects (or goes right through if glass) and doesn't register.
2. It's comfy on the heel of your hand.

I remember seeing this in a text book back in 2004-2005 thinking how pretty neat that was.

At first I thought this was completely illogical novelty because there is absolutely no tactile feedback and it probably misreads much of what you type.

But now, given the overabundance of touch-screen "keyboard" use, maybe this is the perfect thing for the knuckle-dragging youth of today.

He's right.

Early optical mouses couldn't deal with high accelerations. Ball mouses did a much better job, particularly if you were a low-sens player. I replaced by ball mouse when the Intelli Mouse Explorer 3.0 was released.

Maybe every other month if you never washed your hands you filthy grease monkey

Ball is actually better than optical for fast paced shooters since it stops consistently, every time with the ball.
Lazer mice just flag you are a fucking retard.

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Ayo eat mine old men, you dusty old coggers need to fuck off before you turn to dust

Don't make me send a note home to your parents.