Microsoft introduced the Intellimouse back in 1996. I purchased my trusty old Intellimouse Explorer back in 2001 when I was playing a lot of online PC games. The Intellimouse has two left side buttons (for right hand thumb) and was upgraded from a 1500 to a 6000 fps sensor in 2001. This made it perfect for FPS shooters like Doom and Quake. Fast forward to 2022 and you can still get the latest version of this classic design in the Microsoft Pro IntelliMouse.
A few weeks ago I noticed that my Intellimouse was causing my computer to freeze. I still had keyboard control, but the mouse curser wouldn't move. I thought I might have a faulty USB port, so I moved the mouse to another port and it seemed to work better. After a few days the mouse started disconnecting and reconnecting from the computer when I moved it. This told me that there was something wrong with the mouse. By moving the cord where it connected to the mouse, I was able to reproduce the fault. There was a bad wire in the cable at the stress point shown in the red circle.
I checked Ebay to see if I could buy a replacement mouse or USB cable. The average asking price for a used Intellimouse is around $30 and the only replacement cables were from sellers located in China. The replacement cable is only about $10, but I didn't want to wait 6 weeks to get one. I decided to disassemble the mouse and see if I could repair the cable myself. There are 4 screws on the bottom located under the slide pads. After removing them you can carefully separate the top from the base. The USB cable is connected to the pcb with a 5 pin connector. I removed the cable and cut out the bad section. The failure was in the multi-stranded copper ground wire that wraps around the red, white, green, and black wires.
The wires are very small, which made exposing the bare wire and soldering them very difficult. One wire pulled out of the connector as I was working on it, so I decided to solder the wires directly into the male end of the connector. This worked better because I didn't have to worry about isolating a bundle of repaired wires. I put a piece of 5mm diameter heat shrink near the repaired end and applied hot glue to the top of the male connector to keep the wires from coming loose. I then reassembled the mouse. You have to be careful with the side buttons. They can be difficult to align as you put the mouse back together. Now my old battle-worn Intellimouse is working again.
No comments:
Post a Comment