retrohax.net

… or moving production in-house

Intro

Here we are again with the mouSTer adapter update! This one is huge for us.
First things first. I had a major break from blog posting due to various things. Let me sum it up by writing just …. life 🙂

It took some time to get where we are with the mouSTer adapter. We’ve had to go through many issues to manufacture a fresh and updated batch. Willy/Lamers has checked several manufacturers and there was always something missing in their offers. Meanwhile, he was working on firmware as some Github or Discord users know.
After all, Willy decided to invest in some hardware and move the production process to his home.

Home factories and the manufacturing process

Turned out that both of us would run small home factories. For me, it is already a daily job as I do 3D printing, laser cutting, and fabricating lots of parts for retro computers while working on them. Willy had to work on it a lot because apart Pick’n’Place machine, there are other tools needed to manufacture a working PCB at home. Willy figured that ordering PCBs is the most optimal way so we only(lol!) needed to populate parts with some sort of pick’n’place machine and then heat it in the oven.

That some sort of pick’n’place machine turned out to be LumenPNP by Opulo! Absolutely fantastic project that I have been watching grow for hmm … years now 😀 Keep up the good work guys!

The process of figuring out all the details is the most time-consuming, hence all the delays. However, Willy finally figured it all out, and here are some pics.

After populating all the parts, a PCB has to be “baked” in the oven so the melted solder completes the circuits.

The oven is hacked as it should 😀

Once the process is finished, connectors can be populated and soldered.

This is where where my part starts. Once it is all ready and tested, Willy sends all the adapters to my place. We live in different countries so this is a necessity.

This time, we will ship all the mouSTers with the 3D printed cases. Thanks to breakthroughs in 3D printing speeds achieved in recent years, I am now able to manufacture cases in an acceptable time.

The case model was already introduced in one of the previous posts and it was created by one of the mouSTer users.

Here is the relevant part:
One of the readers (cheers Tor) contacted us and offered help in designing a 3D printable housing for the mouSTer. I’ve sent him a sample and we are waiting for the effects. I will release separate info once we have it. He’d also made a very cool adapter for PS/2 mice which is similar to the mouSTer. There is a thread about it on Reddit

The STL files are free to download so you can safely print them yourself if you have a 3D printer.

After running some performance tests, I found the proper settings and started printing the cases.

Here is how it looks:

As usual, we also had to design a sticker with basic info, which is placed on an ESD-safe string bag that contains the adapter. This all has to be processed and packed, and surprisingly, it takes a lot of time when working on larger batches.

The mouSTer on RS232 – old PC support

To support more devices, we are in the process of prototyping some add-ons.

The first one to go is for old PCs using DB9 connectors for the mouse. Normally, the mouSTer is powered by a computer that it is connected to however, RS232 does not supply any power pin and this is why we need such an add-on. The power is supplied from an external source via a USB-C connector.

Future upgrades

Next in line is an add-on for the Macintosh family of computers. It will allow to use USB mouse on machines with ADB.

Also, Willy is planning to write a new firmware that allows the use of a mouse wheel in Amiga and the Atari ST line of computers.

There was a driver released that kinda works but we are not happy with that solution as it heavily depends on hardware versions of Amiga with various accelerators. In other words, sometimes it works, and sometimes doesn’t. Should work on stock configurations though.

Final words

The mouSTer will be available via my website and re-sellers shop on eBay.

I will start shipping it in January and the first batch is around 200 units. Once the mouSTer is available in the shop, all interested who already clicked the in-stock notifier, should receive an email. However, the in-stock notifier already shows that there are more than 200 people in a queue. No worries, we will have a fresh batch available soon. The mouSTer hopefully will stay available for a long time, although short outages might occur. Also, please keep in mind that I won’t be able to ship all 200 parcels in one day so please be patient.

With all that said, I wish you a happy new 2025 year!!!

STL files of the mouSTer case

Outro

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