Contour Perfit Mouse Linux Information

USB Perfit Mouse

(Thanks to Brendan K for his tips)

I just wanted to take a moment and scribble down these notes, since I'm sure others have encountered the same problems. I'd sent an earlier copy of this, but that was missing a crucial part (the insmod of mousedev). Thus this revised copy is being sent in its place. I think this information would be a great addition to the www.contourdesign.com/perfit_linux.htm page, which at the moment only talks about the PS/2 and Serial uses of the Perfit.

The goal has been to make my Contour Perfit USB mouse (model UPG-L-R) work with my Linux system. The laptop is a Toshiba Portege 3200, and it's running a very-updated version of RedHat 6.1. (By now it's somewhere between RedHat 6.2 and 7.0, I imagine.) It's running a 2.2.16 kernel, with the USB patch named usb-2.4.0-test2-pre2-for-2.2.16 from the Linux-USB group at

http://www.suse.cz/development/usb-backport/

http://www.linux-usb.org

(I've started to try out 2.2.18, but have stuck to 2.2.16 due to the system freezing while loading up serial_cb for my Xircom 10/100 PCMCIA ethernet card. Long story; suffice it to stay, I'm not investing a lot of time into that yet.)

Anyway, I got my mouse to work by doing these commands:
insmod usbcore
insmod usb-uhci
insmod input
insmod usbmouse
insmod mousedev

My kernel build was configured to have
CONFIG_USB=m
CONFIG_USB_DEBUG=y
CONFIG_USB_UHCI=m
CONFIG_USB_MOUSE=m

(actually most of the CONFIG_USB_* stuff is set to be a module)

I then created /dev/usbmouse with:
mknod /dev/usbmouse c 13 32
It uses major device 13 based on the result of doing a cat of /proc/devices, which listed 13 input.

Anyway, after doing that on my non-X console screen, I then did
gpm -k
gpm -t ps2 -m /dev/usbmouse
and it worked! I changed the /dev/mouse symlink to point at `usbmouse', and
with the XF86Config file containing:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "PS2"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
EndSection

running X (version 4.0.1) seems perfectly happy. Now to make all of that
insmod'ing more automatic.

You don't want to know how long it took to find this correct sequence of
events. :) In retrospect it sure seems obvious, but...

Serial and PS2 Perfit Mouse

For Intel Based Machines.

Redhat v6.x, Mandrake v6.x using Serial (3 button mode) simply select Mouse Systems 3 Button Mouse.

Redhat v6.x, Mandrake v6.x using PS/2 simply select PS/2 mouse for native 3 Button in either OS.

Exception: with the PS2 Perfit Mouse REV 1.1, choose PS/2 wheel mouse instead of generic 3 button PS/2 mouse in your mouse configuration window.

Or modify the XF86Config file as follows:

search for
Section "InputDevice"

and modify the line
Option "Protocol" ...
(or add it after the "Driver" key if it doesn't exist)
into
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"