[9fans] VMware and Plan9

[9fans] VMware and Plan9

[Anastasopoulos S]

Hi

A question more about VMware than Plan9 but i assume some other 9fan
already solved this.


I use vmware3.2-2230 on a Win2kSP2 host with a 3 button ps2 mouse. The
problem is that plan9 does not `see' the middle button which works fine
with windows applications(sam for instance).

Does anyone has a hint?(Shift + button3 is very annoying)
or can give a link for a new ps2 mouse driver

Thanks
Spyros

Re: [9fans] VMware and Plan9

[Russ Cox]

Two things.  First, go into Control Panel -> Mouse -> Trackpoint
and make sure that the middle button setting is "neither" (there
are three choices: "scrolling", "zooming", and "neither").

Second, start regedit.  Look for

	HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
	 System
	  CurrentControlSet
	   Enum
	    ACPI
	     IBM3780
	      <ugly hex>
	       DeviceParameters

You may have to substitute something else for IBM3780 depending
on who makes your laptop.  Find the one with keys named "MouseResolution",
"MouseDataQueueSize", etc.  Add a new DWORD variable "NumberOfButtons"
with value 3.

Now you should be okay.

The problem is actually not the IBM-supplied mouse driver but the
underlying Windows-supplied basic i8042 PS/2 mouse driver, on which
the Trackpoint driver sits.

The Windows driver expects the Trackpoint to respond to command E9
as the Logitech mice do, giving the number of buttons as the second byte.
Unfortunately, the Trackpoint sends back some form of sampling resolution
instead, and even more unfortunately the default resolution is encoded
as 0x02, tricking Windows into thinking that there are but two mouse
buttons on the Trackpoint.  Since this is the Trackpoint controller simply
implementing a different command E9, the only way to get the hardware
to respond correctly is to turn it off in the BIOS, so that the external
mouse can respond for itself.

Happily, Windows is nothing if not configurable.  The registry key makes
Windows ignore what it has incorrectly interpreted the hardware to have said.
DirectInput (which VMware uses, but most apps don't) ignores the middle
button when it thinks the mouse has only two buttons.  The stock Windows
mouse path has no problem with a "two"-button mouse generating middle-button
events.

Russ