A mouse or trackball is a device that translates planar motion into pulse trains. Quadrature techniques are employed to preserve the direction as well as magnitude of displacement. The registers JOY0DAT and JOY1DAT become counter registers, with y displacement in the high byte and x in the low byte. Movement causes the following action: Up: y decrements Down: y increments Right: x increments Left: x decrements To determine displacement, JOYxDAT is read twice with corresponding x and y values subtracted (careful, modulo 128 arithmetic). Note that if either count changes by more than 127, both distance and direction become ambiguous. There is a relationship between the sampling interval and the maximum speed (that is, change in distance) that can be resolved as follows: Velocity < Distance(max) / SampleTime Velocity < SQRT(DeltaX**2 + DeltaY**2) / SampleTime For an Amiga with a 200 count-per-inch mouse sampling during each vertical blanking interval, the maximum velocity in either the X or Y direction becomes: Velocity < (128 Counts * 1 inch/200 Counts) / .017 sec = 38 in/sec which should be sufficient for most users. NOTE: ----- The Amiga software is designed to do mouse update cycles during vertical blanking. The horizontal and vertical counters are always valid and may be read at any time. CONNECTOR PIN USAGE FOR MOUSE/TRACKBALL QUADRATURE INPUTS --------------------------------------------------------- PIN MNEMONIC DESCRIPTION HARDWARE REGISTER/NOTES --- -------- ----------- ----------------------- 1 V Vertical pulses JOY[0/1]DAT<15:8> 2 H Horizontal pulses JOY[0/1]DAT(7:0> 3 VQ Vertical quadrature pulses JOY[0/1]DAT<15:8> 4 HQ Horizontal quadrature pulses JOY[0/1]DAT<7:0> 5 UBUT* Unused mouse button See Proportional Inputs . 6 LBUT* Left mouse button See Fire Button . 7 +5V +5V, current limited 8 Ground 9 RBUT* Right mouse button See Proportional Inputs .