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Blue and White G3 "Optical" Puck Mouse

7th Jan 2006, 23:18:01

By James Stocks

It's Saturday night and I'm trying to find things to do other than study for my CCNA cert, so I'm reading AppleFritter. Since I have a spare 5V blue LED, a light up mouse seems like something I simply must have right away. The soldering iron is heating up...

Light up G3 Mouse

My victim is the deeply unpopular Puck mouse belonging to my B&W Power Mac G3. This is the oldest model that lacked the dimple on the button to tell the user that they are holding the mouse the right way up.

The procedure takes just a few minutes; open up the mouse and just solder an LED to the 1st and 4th solder pads on the PCB just below the ball:

LED Placement

Taking the advice of the AppleFritter page, I mounted my LED so that it shone on the mouse ball. Since the LED was a superbright, I also partly covered it with some insulation tape so that it would not dazzle me all the time!

Insulation Tape on LED

In daylight, the effect is subtle:

Mouse in Daylight

In a dark room, it illuminates the desk nicely:

Mouse and Screen at night

2 Archived Comments

4th Jun 2010, 19:05:14 by rwernst1920132
Great idea.

Now, how do I open the hockey puck mouse itself? I can't seem to find any instructions on the web.

Thanks,

Rich

4th Jun 2010, 21:51:20 by stocksy
Pull off the coloured plastic trim, remove the two philips screws revealed.

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