First, pentium motherboards use a different pinout for the ribbon cable than
most 486 motherboards did.  You can not always scavenge the serial connector
with ribbon cable attached from a 486 and use it with a pentium board.  As
for connecting it accurately, the red line on the ribbon is line 1, and
there will be a corresponding 1 on the motherboard next to the connection,
showing the proper orientation for the red line.  Make sure the ribbon is on
the port you want to use.  With no ps/2 port, the motherboard almost surely
has two serial ports installed.
Second, the cmos settings for the serial ports need to be enabled.  You can
see this when you boot.  The text box message that appears, showing
installed cpu and memory, will list the serial ports installed. Pressing the
PAUSE key on your keyboard will allow you time to read this message box.  Go
into cmos and enable the port if it does not appear during the boot up.
Third, the modem can't share the serial port or irq with the mouse.  If the
modem is on 4 or 2, then the mouse must be on 1. If the modem is on 3 or 1,
the mouse must be on 2.
Fourth, it is just possible you have a mouse driver in config.sys or
autoexec.bat that is interfering with windows.  Check the contents of these
two files in the C:\ folder, and make sure there is no mouse.exe or
mouse.sys getting loaded.
Last, my time honored solution to this problem, (used to see people who put
serial mouse on a ps/2 mouse system with the same results you are having) is
to force windows into safe mode.  Hold down ctrl key just as soon as you see
the boot up message text box and the windows start-up menu appears.  If the
mouse is going to work at all, choosing safe mode should do it.  Windows
will detect a serial mouse and load a generic driver.  If this works, while
in safe mode, go to device manager and delete the mouse, (it is not loaded
anyway in safe mode), and reboot.  You should see the windows hardware
wizard run when windows starts, with the mouse detected and installed.

If the mouse isn't found in safe mode, and 1 - 4 above are correct, get a
new mouse.

Tom Turak


-----Original Message-----
From: Fortescue, Marshall [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 8:26 AM


I am working on an older computer...it doesn't have any ps/2 ports...just a
serial port and the old fashion type port for the keyboard.  The mouse does
not work at all.  What I have done:  installed drivers, re-installed Win98,
deleted the mouse from the Device Manager and hoped that Windows would find
the hardware.  I think that has exhausted the "software" aspect of this
problem.  Inside the computer, the port to the MB connection (a ribbon
cable) seems to be connected tightly and accurately.  Is there anyway that
the port-to-mb ribbon cable is the problem?  Is there anything else I should
try?

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