l337 Barney n00b question!

[The Golden Shark]

wtf does that little wheel around the laser do ( on the apple pro mouse) ? and what does the program button do on the tower? ( the wave one next to the emergancy restart button)

[BTs_Mysterio]

The wheel is to set the tension on the mouse button. The button is pannic button, which in OS 9 (don't know about OSX) brings up a text interface to enter commands to override a crashed application. Doesn't always work but its still good.

[The Golden Shark]

cool ,thnx i feel so enlightend

[Mr. Lothario]

     Actually, its real name is the "programmer's button". It sends an interrupt that causes the system to drop into whatever low-level debugger (e.g. MacsBug) is running. In the normal case, that "low level debugger" is the aforementioned text box, which is not a debugger at all, but provides some very limited functionality for terminating crashed programs or rebooting the computer, for example.

     I've never pressed it while running OS X, so I have no idea what it does there.

[Toxic::Joka]

Set the tension  

could you be more specific....  -   0    +

cause this just might slove a problem i been having, once in awhile the cursor all the sudden jumps to the other end of the screen. This is very annoying when playing GhR and having a enemy in your reticule and you find yourself aiming at the sky  

I used to have it on - but when i read this thread i remembered the wheel down there and changed it to 0, il see how it works now.

PS. this problem first arouse when i got a new mouse pad  

[Mr. Lothario]

     The wheel controls how much force is needed to click the mouse, and I think it also controls how much of the mouse is a button. That is, on a lower tension setting, you can press further towards the back of the mouse to click.

     The jumping cursor is an issue with laser mice in general. A laser mouse works by reflecting a laser off of a surface, into a sensor. The surface that the sensor is "looking at" changes as you move the mouse around, and the sensor translates that into mouse-movement instructions for the computer. If the surface you're moving the mouse around on is optically discontinuous (that is, it's got sudden changes from light to dark, or complex patterns, etc.), the sensor will interpret those sudden optical changes as sudden movements of the mouse. So, your cursor goes haywire. The best surface for an optical mouse is a surface that is all one color.

[Toxic::Joka]

Wow
thank you !!

[Jeb]

there is no macsbug in OsX,
But i do remember that with macsbug running, it would bring the debugger up rather than the ugly white box. That was the best way to forcequit a application that was hanging in os9.
OsX owns...
and who still uses the apple pro mouse?

[kos.viper]

Not I.  I can't use a computer without a right mouse button or a sexy scroll wheel.