A Visit to My Place: Preparation for VCF Midwest Festival and the Joy of Mouse Collecting

As I sit here surrounded by my belongings, I am reminded that this is how I often appear behind the camera. But today, I wanted to share with you a bit about what brought me here. The other week, I was going through a bunch of things, trying to do some organizing and find some items that I wanted to bring to the VCF Midwest festival in Elmhurst, Illinois. As it turned out, I made it and it was amazing. Expect a video about that soon, if all goes well. I have a lot of footage to edit down, but for now, let's talk about something else that caught my attention while I was here.

As I rummaged through the items, I couldn't help but notice how many mice I have. Computermice, also known as mouses or input devices that plug into a mouse or use a cursor, are abundant in my collection. While most of them don't deserve a full video, they do make for some interesting stories. That's why I wanted to talk about a few of them, starting with the Mouse Burger. This was one that I actually took to the show and it turned out to be a surprise hit. I was surprised by how many people were amused by just seeing this device and wondering why I hadn't done a video on it before. So, here's my chance to rectify that.

In the same section of the darkness where I found the Mouse Burger, I also have a few other devices that I've had for years. One of them is the Corvette Motor Mouse. This one was already in my collection when I received it as a gift from someone. The Media Mouse and Multimedia Audio Mouse are two more examples of input devices that make sounds or produce noise. While I don't know exactly what each of these does, they're certainly interesting additions to my collection.

I decided to show you all three of these devices today. First up, we have the double cheeseburgers, courtesy of the RTC company. These are also known as Model RON-55 serial mice for PC/XT/AT and compatibles, with a two-year warranty. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly what years this was produced or how much it originally cost. It seems that most of these devices have vague histories, which is why I only did some basic research to see if I could find any old listings in newspapers or magazines.

Luckily, my viewers have been generous and sent me MouseBurgers as a donation. Michael and Steven are the ones who sent them to me at the same time. Apparently, each of these cost $2.50 secondhand and were unused when they arrived. One of the MouseBurgers is already opened up and brought to the show, VCF Midwest. It's amazing how it seemed to kick off this mouse video because I was genuinely and happily pleased to see that so many folks came by and were just like, "Wow, what is this thing?"

While I have a lot of footage to edit down, I'm excited to share more stories about my collection in the future. And who knows, maybe we'll even get some more mice on the table.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Greetings and welcome to an LGR Thingwhere I am surrounded bystuff. This is actuallyhow I'm often appearing behind the camera.But anyway, yeah. I wasover here the other weekat this point. Just goingthrough a bunch of things,trying to do some organizingand find some stuff that Iwanted to bring to Elmhurst, Illinois atthe VCF Midwest festival,which is what I was goingto be attending.And I did. And it was awesome.Expect a video about thathere in the near-ish future,if all goes well. I've got alot of footage to edit down.But while I'm working onthat and other LGR projects,I just got to thinking,looking through all this, like,I have a lot of mice! Computermice that is, or mouses,if you want to get allfancy or whatever, but yeah.Whatever you want tocall them, input devicesthat plug into a mouseor use a cursor, mousecursor kind of thing. I got a lot of themand a lot of them don'treally merit a full,dedicated video. They'reall odd. So they could beon Oddware. But at thesame time, I just wantedto talk about a few ofthem starting with thisright here, theMouse Burger. And this isone that I actually tookto the show and it waskind of the surprise hit.I was surprisedhow many people were reallyamused by just seeing thisand being able to useit and wondering why Ihadn't done a video on it.So yeah, I gotta do a video.But just over there in thatsame section of the darknessback there, I have thisI've had for years,the Corvette Motor Mouse,as well as the Media Mouse,Multimedia Audio Mousethat sings or makes noises.I don't know exactly. Solet's just look at all three!Alrighty. So first up wehave double cheeseburgers,a couple of Mouse Burgers bythe RTC company, apparently.Model RON-55.Yes, serial mouse for PC/XT/ATand compatibles with a two year warranty.Which years were those? I don't know.How much did it originallycost? I also don't know.That's probably going to bea common theme across prettymuch all of these. I've donesome basic research just to seeif I could find any oldlistings in newspapers andmagazines or anything,nothing really concrete.These are both here thanksto donations from LGR viewers,Michael and Steven, inthis case. Thank you both.They just happened to send MouseBurgers at the same time.Apparently this one cost$2.50 secondhand and yeah,they were each unused.So this one I have alreadyopened up and brought tothe show, VCF Midwest,and it kind of kicked offthis mouse video because I wasgenuinely and happily pleasedto see that so many folks cameby and were just like, \"what is this?\"And let me just go ahead and open it up.Oops, there's a disk on the floor.All right. So yeah, it's,it's a cheeseburger.A rather shiny greasylooking burger that happensto be a serial mouse and a, yeah.Ball mouse. All these aregonna be ball mouse devices.So yeah, just, I guessseeing this over thereon the LGR table at theshow, it just kind of stood outfrom the crowd.All right. Get that freshball inserted right thereand lock that up. Andthat's that. You know,of course a lot of folkswere coming by being like,is that a burger hockey puck mouse forthe apple iMac or something.And it's actually aboutthe same size as that. But no,it's just a serial mouse, threebuttons and no scroll wheel.Of course this predates thatbeing a thing, but yeah.Nine pin serial, andthat's that, you know,that's all that is.You plug it into a computer and it works.And it also came with somethings that I genuinely haven'tlooked at yet.I got a registration card for theRonsonic Trading Corporation.All right. And mousetrackball user's manual.Very generic.Congratulations on gettingthis mouse or track ball.I'm assuming that is justgoing along with whatever othermouse or input devices they sold.Yeah. It's probablyjust a generic program.Whatever, I guess we'lllook at it real quick.No mention of burgers whatsoeverin there. And regarding itscheeseburger aesthetic you know,how close is it actuallyto a single, I don't know,maybe a quarter poundcheeseburger? Well, here you go.Yeah. I didn't get one withthe same toppings at all.Just picked up something quick. Anyway.I don't know which oneis more comfortable,but actually this one for sure.All right, enough silliness.Let's get this hookedup to the Woodgrain 486!Yeah. Windows 3.1 going on theLGR Woodgrain 486 over there.And the Burger Mouse pluggedinto the serial port,I guess the Mouse Burger,which I don't know whythey labeled it that way.\"Mouse Burger\" makes it sound like a burgerthat's made of mice, which,isn't that the like part of the plotof Fievel Goes West?the Mouse Burgers!I just remembered that, oh man.Childhood weirdly coming up. Anyway, yeah.You don't need to do anythingfor setting up a Windows 3.1because it just looks for amouse. So it's ready to go.It's here. It's working.All this comes with is justa driver for DOS and a testprogram. And my light just died.Actually, it doesn't lookterribly bad like this, butlet me go get a battery, good grief.Oh man, go away for a week,forget to recharge all my batteries. Okay.So what was I saying? All right.Yeah. So it's a mouse.It works fine.Let's open something up justto give it a quick test ofwhatever.Yeah.So I do run into that whereit's just like get differentsensitivities between the X and Y.So it makes it a little unpredictable.I don't know what settingit's using by default,because if you saw it on the box,maybe, it does have different DPI settingssupposedly up to 4,200.So, yeah, this is whatthe installer looked like,just showing it again.Choose your mouse typein a couple of ways.Serial, general, three button,and then you can choosefrom different things here.I went into manual andinstalled it to the maximumresolution. And in PCmouse mode, three buttonis what I had it set to, I believe.And if I go into this as justthe test program and see the,yeah. So I have it set to amax resolution and it is reallysensitive. Let's change that.So yeah, here it is allthe way at the lowest.It's too low. Put itthrough right about here.That's about right forDOS, cuz you know,you don't have a ton ofresolution. And go into uh, yeah.PC mouse mode, which Ibelieve is three button.Oh. And it also has allof these pop-up utilities,just a TSR that runs and providesmenus that you can add tothese types of programs if you want.So if we wanted, we couldopen the DOS pop-up menuand yeah, there you go.We just have a pop-up thinghere with all of these differentcommon and not so common DOScommands that you can open upwith your mouse only.Descent. Why not?How many people playedDescent with a cheeseburger?I'm just kind of curious ifthis will allow me to use allthree buttons. So yeah, bydefault we've got left and right.Let's see if I can do flare. There we go.Yeah. So we can use all three buttons.That's kind of nice.Yeah.Again, I can tell that thesensitivity is slightly differentbetween X and Y, butIt's honestly not too bad.Whoops.Supposed to rescue hostages,not shoot them in the face.I mean, consideringthis is a cheeseburger,it's not too bad. Honestly,having used like theiMac mouse puck mousefor a good number of hoursover the years on variousearlier Macs, yeah.I mean, I didn't growup with it or anything,but I have used it and this isnot too different from that,but you're still just grippingonto like the condiments.It kind of gives yousomething extra to grip onto.So yeah. I don't hate the Burger Mouse.I mean, it's not amazing.I would never choose it over other things.I don't think unless just forthe novelty factor, but yeah.The Mouse Burger Burger Mouse, it's okay.It's just that X and Ything. And like with Duke 3D,I was playing Duke match withsome folks at VCF Midwest.And I was playing itwith this at first. Yeah.This mouse being hookedup X and Y difference,I didn't know what such adifferent thing. So I had to,I played it that way and itsucked at first because Icouldn't aim up or downreliably. And I just went intothe options and adjusted for it.With that being in place,it's not a terrible mouse.Despite being a cheeseburger.Do wish it had some likecheeseburger-themed software though.All right, next up, we'vegot the Corvette Motor Mouse,something that I pickedup on eBay some years ago,just because, I mean, look at it.It's a Corvette,A little C4 there, and it is a mouse withother assorted things. Yes.The great new three buttonmouse for your computer.IBM PC and Windows compatible.But the thing that reallyintrigued me was not only theshape, I've got a lot of miceor mouses shaped like cars,but this one, right.Let's just read a little bit of that here.Once you've taken a MotorMouse for a test drive,your old mouse just won'tdo we've combined style,excellent da duh da duhda duh dah, but yeah,it comes with this cursorcontrol software changes the lookof your cursor to the MotorMouse you are driving and itruns under Microsoft Windows.Also you can rev the enginesound of the horn and move outacross the old applicationswith new style and instantlyswitched back to aprecision cursor. I mean,that just sounds wonderful.Let us check it out. The mouse that roars.Yeah, that was the otherthing I was like, what, roars?I guess it just is revvingengine noises you can play back.Alright.Yeah. That's pretty muchrather expecting there.So just another nine pin serial connector.We've got the mousehanging out and some stuff.Software. Not concernedabout preserving the package.So yeah. Oh, Hey look,we got a blue kind ofAmiga, Atari ST-looking diskthere, but high density.\"Motor Mouse\" with a lovelyfont that they, yeah.They put some effort intothis. Motor Mouse Products,1992 version, 1.0 made in Canada.And we also got actualinstructions this timefor the device itself.So not just a generic,like whatever mouse devicewe happen to sell applies to this.Yeah. It looks pretty simple.Also. I got some more here.Why do we have two of them?I don't think there's anyreal big surprises here.If you have a sound card. Yeah.Just plug in your speakers. If not,they've included a PCspeaker sound driver.Well, that's handy.I remember using those as akid and I didn't have a soundcard and it would play likewave files through Windows,just through the PC speaker, fun times.Wow look at this.So we've got like, I was expectingtwisty ties or something,but it's like thesestretchy little thingies.How classy? Oh crap.Well, you know. That answerswhat the inside looks like.Ehhhh.This is...Off to a great start.Well, whatever.Let's see if we can put thisthing back together. Yeah.It's just a normal mouse in there.There's a black mouse ball.I don't see those very often.Usually they're beigey, gray,white. That's really dark.I like it. Little micro switches.It's just a mouse in thereuses the Genius Mouse chip.I've seen that on a number ofdevices from back in the day.So there is the foam.So this one's got the ballalready inserted. Of course.Unlike the burger what'dyou had to insert yourself.And then yeah, there's alittle switch down there too,it looks like. Let's seewhat that, what does that do?So you can, you caneither have it installedreplacing your original mouse or have itinstalled beside it.Interesting. Is that serial number66? Don't know how many ofthese were made, but I've seena number on eBay. And yeah.What's, what is this sadness?Maybe that'll just...Oh man, little pieces keep falling off.Okay. Well, that's kind of on there.I'll see if I can get it moreattached before I actuallytest it. But yeah,you just sort of press down on the hoodin three differentspots. It's literally justsplit apart there.It's not bad, I guess,in terms of the accuracy and Iassume they actually licensedthis from GM or whatever.Alright. Let's try outthe Corvette Motor Mouse,such as it is.Alrighty. So, Corvette Motor Mouseglued back together somewhat.Good, as good as I can get it any way.And I have the Motor Mousesoftware for Windows installed.And yet it does have a DOS installation,they put it in this directory here,but everything that'sinteresting opens in Windows, so.All right.And it just straight awayinstalls this Cruise Control areahere. And we can go into aspecial setup for the Motor Mousecontrol. We have acceleration settings,if you want to do that.Yeah. And that's just mouse acceleration.I am not a fan of itpretty much ever. And this,it actually lets you choosethe different vertical andhorizontal sensitivities right there,which by default Windows,doesn't let you do.The Burger Mouse honestlycould have used that.As it is though, itfeels pretty good so far.And then really this isthe star of the show,the Cruise Control application.All right.This is what changes yourcursor to an animated Corvette.I honestly wasn't expectingit to look this cool.It takes a second to get usedto because of the pointer isjust yeah, look at that.There's like, yeah, it's pretty neat.I didn't expect that at all.A lot of times you'll get thesecustom cursors and it's justa regular little arrow withlike a graphic beside it orsomething. But no, this just animates.It's neat. And thenyou can also change thecar size there, like I just did.You can change the color as well.So we got a nice yellowCorvette and a white one.I don't know if the mousecame in different colors too,but you can change it here.We'll just put it to what themouse is. Sound on and off.I guess that button rightthere turns the animation andthat's the panel we've alreadyseen. And then there's these,which just puts littlepeople going past or likethere's a dog, there's a dog.And here's anotherperson with like, a tire.Yeah. A little bit of gettingused to with that pointer.There we go.Yeah. Cuz sometimesyou'll see, it's like, yeah.Right there,that frame in particular, there'sa couple of frames that havelike that. So I ended upwanting to point over thereor I want to point withthis part of the Corvetteinstead of like the verytip of it. I don't know.It's slightly weird, but it's fine.I guess we'll see what it'slike to paint something with.Oh yeah. Way more consistentresults with this.It's just that mouse cursor.It makes it a little strange,but it's cool to lookat. Like, I don't know.I would've thought that would'vebeen the neatest thing everas a kid and then I'dprobably want to turn it offimmediately, like I'm about to do.Yeah. Oh, that's so much better.All right. Okay.Try it out with a game.I mean, yeah. This seemslike the obvious choice.[\"I left my heart in San Francisco\"PC speaker music plays]Oh man. Turn turbo on.Turbo doesn't help too much.It does slow it down a little though.So let's just go against that.Eh.Okay, car is farting, that is good.Let's go over here.Huh huh huh! All right. Ooh.Okay. That's cool.How do I accelerate? That?Oh crap. Oh crap.Oh man.What's brake? Do I not have a brake?I don't think I have a brake honestly.Left button accelerates.Okay, we're in the water.Let's try that again.Okay, I was thinking maybeone of the other buttonschanged gears or something,but, apparently not.Come on now, shift.It's in auto. I just ran over a person,I was looking at the gears.All right, so let's justfocus on the steeringbecause oh my goodness.Turn the sound off.Yeah, it's fine.It's perfectly fine.Little overly sensitive,but I think we can change.Nope. It's at the lowestsensitivity already.So a little overly sensitive, perhaps.I'm just gonna run over a nun real quick.This game is fantastic.All right. So you can playVette! with a Corvette mouse.It's pretty awesome.You know, and the shapeisn't really that badfor like a mouse. Youget this, like the humpof this whole area of the carthat doesn't feel too bad.And it's a little weirdclicking on a hood,but I am again, kind of impressed here.The clicking feelsterrible, I will give it thatbecause you're just like, eh, but maybethat's just because half ofthe stuff in there is broken.It's like you're clickingand then it's like extracreakiness. And I feel myself though withmy thumb and pinky, just sortof going into the, whoops.Yeah. The rear wheels. But yeah.So other than the ways thatit sucks, it's not bad.Yeah. Corvette and thatlittle Windows 3.1 app.I mean, that's just charming. All thesound effects of the animations, yeah.It's not a bad little novelty gift.Okay. And last, but maybeleast, I don't know.I guess we'll find out,is the Media Mouse withsound capabilities. Yes.It's a mouse with a built in speaker,I presume. Multimedia audio mouse,a singing mouse that everybody loves.Sing like a bird, bark like a dog,or a roar like a Ferrari. Okay.Maybe it doesn't even have a speaker.Maybe it's literally justthe software doing it.I don't know, actually,now that I think about it.Like it just says \"interactive audio mouse.\"Generate sounds selected by the user.Kind of sounds like what wejust saw with the Corvette.Okay. Well this isprobably less interestingthan I thought it was initially.I mean a mouse with a speakerwouldn't be completelyunheard of. I've got akeyboards with speakers,and speakers that go in drive bays,and speakers, just everythinghad speakers at one point.Okay. We've got some software,a piece of paper, registration.That is definitely justa mouse. All right.So the software is goingto be the only unique thingabout this. It's just a generic ball mousethat's got the littleball in there already.And see what we got here.A mouse setup disk.WinCursor, Melody Mouse.Keep changing the name on us here.Alright. \"Enjoy the world'sfirst multimedia mouse.\"That might just be debatable. All right.So yeah. Software and it, yeah.The software lets you play sound effects.Simple enough hints. Once you finish it,you'll find a program group.These are terrible hints.Let's plug it in. See whatthe sounds sound like.Alrighty. Media mouseplugged in and Windows 3.1.It's just working, well, sort of.That is very jittery and notalways working horizontally.Hmm.All right. Well yeah, everything isnice and clean in there. It's justbarely working like thoserollers are. I mean,you know, this, this is the one that feltthe cheapest out of all of them, but likethis is next levelcheap. Kind of admirable.It didn't actually come withany kind of mouse control panel,just came with this MelodyMouse software on the disk.Got that installed. Solet's see what this does.Oh no.Oh no!Oh this is terrible!Aw no!It just makes noise as you moveit and it slows it down andit's so laggy and terrible asit has to load in each sound.Oh. As if it weren'tutter garbage already yet.This is bad.Okay.So wow. We have two different options.Melody Mouse and Sound Wall.\"Pixeles\" per play?Let's do that cuz I don't wantit literally all the time.Okay.So every time you move 500 pixels,it plays a terrible soundeffect, like from Kid Pix.What is this? Well, I tosee what Sound Wall does?Okay.All right. So that'splaying Do-Re-Mi, I guess.And here's The zoo,like one note at a time?Why does it do it when you movethe mouse? I am so confused.This is so dumb.I keep looking at it like I'mgoing to figure something out.All right. Let's go back to Melody Mouse.This has change theminimum, change a wave set.Look at how awful this is.Well, this is cursed.Let's go into DOS and load up again.Yeah.Just kind of wondering how itwill do in terms of like thatjitteriness.- It's time to kickass and chew bubble gum.I'm all outta gum.Cool.It seems mostly okay nowmaybe I sort of, broke it in a little bit.Again, the Y sensitivityis way more than the X,but you can address thatin the game settings.And this actually, Duke 3D here.Like I said earlier at theshow I had it set for theBurger Mouse. So anyway, it's okay.All right.Open the doors.- Tired of this crap. Oh man.Suddenly I'm on E1M1 again.- Time to blow up in the corner.- All right. So the mouse is functionaland it kind of works,but like at the same time.Oh man.Yeah, that -- it's okay in here.Just having some weird issuesthere at the beginning.It's Windows, man.Try that final wave set just because.Oh. Drums.It's so obnoxiousand that's like the onlydefining feature of this mouse isthat software. Wow.Terrible mouse, really annoying software.I am very glad weexperienced this together.And if you want to downloadany of these disks, by the way,check the video description.Okay.Well that is about it forthis episode of LGR and yeah.Let me know what you thought.Hopefully this was entertaining.It was pretty fun for me actuallyjust moving from one thingto another. I don't know.I kinda like doing that sometimesinstead of just focusingon one item for 30 minutes.So I don't know if I'lldo any more of these,but let me know your thoughtsand maybe some other thingsthat you'd like to see group together.Like it just have weird keyboardsand weird drive bay thingsand weird speakers.Like there's all kinds ofthings I can think of. So yeah,either way a beefier videoshere in LGR are on the way inthe works, including VCF Midwest.And of course I've madeplenty of other stuff.If you'd like to check out theback catalog and as always,thank you very much for watching.\n"