Optical mouse, the old way

Today’s topic is somewhat unique- a vintage optical mouse, made in the days when it was not very trivial. It’s not like you can just slap a camera in and have it take pictures to figure out where things move. In the old days you had to actually design it, maybe even using some 2N3906 and 555 timers as we’ll find out. Let’s start with unboxing (pardon the masking tape holding things together)

Vintage find

Vintage find

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