1983 — DEC VS10X-EA Mouse

The DEC VS10X-EA mouse was released in 1983, and it is heavily based on the Hawley Mouse House by Jack Hawley, co-designer of the Xerox Alto computer mouse and one of the authors 1973 Xerox patent for a two-wheel tilt mouse. In fact, the DEC VS10X-EA is a modification of the Hawley Mark II X063X Mouse of the same year. Comparison of the two mice reveals no technical differences except the shape of the case and connector. The mouse was supplied with the DEC VAXstation 100 graphical terminals[1]Another DEC mouse https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/mm4des/another_dec_mouse used in creation of the X Windows System, a graphical windowing system for Unix-like OS.

By contrast with the prototype mouse’s body (a parallelepiped with three rectangular buttons), the body of DEC VS10X-EA has a smoother shape with a substantially inclined sides and smooth transitions between the faces. Both mice have same internals, so the smoother shape is achieved at the cost of the increased size, and Hawley mouse’s rectangle is still easily seen on the bottom. Obviously, such improvements had a positive effect on the ergonomics of the device.


The underside is made of metal. The rotation is registered by a smooth steel ball in the center, while two smaller balls act as legs to minimize friction. The mouse was not supplied with a mouse pad, and the VAXstation 100 user manual suggests to put mouse on a plain sheet of paper[2]VAXstation 100 User Guide http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/vaxstation100/AA-N660A-TE_VAXstation_100_Users_Guide_Jun84.pdf.
A removable ring that allows you to remove the ball to remove collected debris is not yet provided in this model, so complete disassembly is necessary for cleaning.

The mouse has a small size, typical for mice of the 1980s, and so the hand can only lean on the body to a small extent.

Mouse internals are shown below. The removable solid protection of the ball is worthy of mention: it requires additional disassembly operations to remove garbage. In this mouse, contact encoders (with four contacts for greater reliability) are used, which are based on a metal contact drum instead of the more common disk in subsequent models.

References
↑1 | Another DEC mouse https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/mm4des/another_dec_mouse |
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↑2 | VAXstation 100 User Guide http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/vaxstation100/AA-N660A-TE_VAXstation_100_Users_Guide_Jun84.pdf |