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Death of the Amiga platform predated introduction of optical mice of reasonable quality by a couple years. The Amiga mouse was a box of problems, with non-ergonomic shape, crud-accumulating rollers and buttons dying after some intense use. Comparing to modern mice it was simply awful. (but still better than, say, Sun's optical mouse of that time, which required a special mousepad to operate and if you rotated the pad it would get all wonky.)

Is there some mod or adapter or such, that would enable me to use/modify/convert a common USB or even PS/2 mouse with Amiga?

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    @Jules: I remember when I worked as admin/support... A user complains why the mouse misbehaves so badly. I rotate the pad 90 degrees. That indignant, exasperated expression on his face - not at me, at the mouse.
    – SF.
    Commented May 16, 2016 at 19:29
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    My university had hundreds of them. A common prank played by the CS students was to wander down to the general-access labs in the middle of the night (there were separate CS labs which, ironically, were mostly stocked with older & cheaper machines...) and rotate all the pads so it would take a while for somebody to figure out what was wrong in the morning...
    – Jules
    Commented May 16, 2016 at 19:36
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    If you want to build your own PS/2 mouse adapter, check out the ps2m project on Aminet.
    – grovdata
    Commented Jun 13, 2016 at 8:57
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    Who said Amiga was dead? News to me.
    – cbmeeks
    Commented Nov 16, 2016 at 21:53

5 Answers 5

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Some of the most available adapters which allow to connect a "modern" mouse to an Amiga are:

Real USB mouse and joystick:

  • The Ryś MK II. This is a very flexible device which supports not only USB mice (including but not limited to PS/2 ones) but also digital and analog USB joysticks. It is even capable of outputting joystick signals compatible with the Amiga CD32 joypad. It is actively supported and information about it can be found on this English Amiga Board thread created by the designer of this adapter. It supports a very large array of devices (cf first link).

PS/2 USB mouse:

  • the Micromys v4 from Individual Computers, available via icomp shop (also available from amigakit, Vesalia and elsewhere)

  • the Cocolino (available from the manufacturer and from various other stores, e.g. amigakit)

As indicated, the latter two support PS/2 mice only (including PS/2-compatible USB mice, with the appropriate adapter). They both support wheel mice, and the Micromys is compatible with a number of other systems (Atari ST etc.).

Google reveals some other possibilities, such as this one from RETROCable; there are no doubt others.

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The Ryś MKII adapter by Retro 7-bit allows connecting USB mice and joysticks/gamepads to the 9-pin Amiga port. It's a true USB device so it's not restricted to PS/2-compatible USB mice like other devices mentioned here.

It's available from a number of Amiga specialist shops (there's a listing of resellers on the page linked above).

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Here is a guide on how to convert an old Microsoft serial mouse to work in the Amiga's mouse/joystick ports. Maybe the guide can be adapted for modern optical mice. (In fact, here is a thread about someone who seems to be claiming to do just that.)

And here is a serial mouse driver for Workbench, all it needs is a serial mouse and an ordinary 9-pin to 25-pin serial adapter. But it only works in Workbench and ties up your serial port.

For those of us who are not skilled in electronics, the Cocolino or Micromys adapter described in another answer in this thread is probably the best solution.

Edit: And here is a bundle containing a Micromys V4 and a wireless PS/2 optical mouse.

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  • Did even optical serial mice exist? I mean, AFAIK the optical mice tend to have power requirements that RS232 simply can't deliver.
    – SF.
    Commented May 10, 2016 at 7:15
  • There's the Q500 serial optical mouse, and the old Summa mouse whose serial connector had a cable to an A/C adapter.
    – snips-n-snails
    Commented May 10, 2016 at 18:47
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Another option is to replace the innards of the original Amiga mouse with a new laser PCB. There is this one sold by AMIGAstore.eu that supports most of the popular Amiga mice models.

Doesn't solve the ergonomics, if that's really a problem, but makes the original-looking mouse just a little bit less infuriating to use.

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Another alternative is to use my Amiga USB Mouse Adapter that I'm selling. It`s also a true usb adapter so you can use any wired or wireless USB mouse.

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    You should mention in your answer that this is a product which you created and are selling; otherwise your answer is liable to be construed as spam.
    – Stephen Kitt
    Commented Feb 16, 2021 at 18:10
  • Sorry just getting started here on retrocomputing.
    – hugseirvak
    Commented Feb 17, 2021 at 1:02

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