ULTRARES.DOC Mouse Systems ULTRA-RES DYNAMIC ACCELERATOR Your Mouse Systems mouse driver provides acceleration capability. That is, the faster you move the mouse, the higher the ratio of cursor movement to mouse movement. Thus, you could move the mouse only one inch, but cause the cursor to move across the screen if you moved the mouse quickly enough. Conversely, you could move the mouse all the way across the pad, and cause the cursor to move only part of the way across the screen if you moved the mouse slowly enough. The acceleration is dynamic. The mouse driver provides 9 levels of acceleration scaling, level 1 through 9. Level 1 is unaggressive, and even offers negative acceleration. Level 9 is very aggressive. Level 0 provides no acceleration, so that the mouse moves at its standard resolution (100 or 200 counts per inch, depending on the model you have), no matter how quickly you move it. The default acceleration level is level 5 when you load the mouse driver with no command line parameters. You might want to change the acceleration level so that the mouse works more comfortably for you in your application. A given level might be too sensitive in some programs and not sensitive enough in others. There are two ways to change an acceleration level: via command line, and via a mouse button and keyboard key combination. To invoke it on the command line, enter the command MSCMOUSE /Ax where is the name of your MSC mouse driver program, and x is the acceleration level (0 - 9). Remember that level 0 is NO ACCELERATION, and causes the driver to use the default resolution of the mouse. To invoke an acceleration level once the mouse driver has been installed, press the left Ctrl and Alt keys simultaneously, and while holding them down press the left mouse button. The computer will beep once. Now release the keys and buttons, then press a keyboard numeric key (0 through 9) for the acceleration level you want. You will hear two beeps to signify that the value has been accepted. If you do not make an entry within 6 seconds, the computer will beep 3 times and abort the process. Some applications do not allow you to change the level this way. In such a case, use the command line method. MOUSE MOVEMENT DATA SENT TO THE COMPUTER The 200-cpi mouse issues 200 counts for one inch of movement in the X or Y direction. It sends sample readings at the rate of 40 samples per second to the computer. Each sample tells the mouse driver how far the mouse has travelled in both X and Y directions since the last sample. The number of counts received in a reading is directly proportional to the velocity at which you are moving the mouse. The maximum value of a sample is 127 counts. That is .635 inches of mouse movement in one 40th of a second, or over 2 feet per second. A sample of 1 count represents mouse movement of less than a quarter inch per second. Thus, low reading indicates a slow mouse movement, and a high reading indicates fast movement. THE USER-MODIFIABLE ACCELERATION CURVE TABLE The mouse driver contains an acceleration curve table. The purpose of the acceleration table is to give multiplication factors to the driver. The driver can multiply the count in a sample by the multiplication factor before sending the count to the application program. In this way, it can tell the application program that the mouse moved farther than it did. The higher the number received in a sample, the larger the multiplication factor. You may find that the acceleration at a given level is not aggressive enough for a given rate of mouse movement, but is just right at other mouse speeds. The ULTRARES program gives you a way to fine-tune that acceleration curve. It allows you to load an acceleration curve table into the MSC mouse driver currently in memory, and thereby overwrite the default values. To execute the program, enter the following command from the DOS command line, where ultrares.tab is the name of the file containing the acceleration curve table: ULTRARES ultrares.tab This table must be an ASCII file and it must contain 10 lines of 1 to 20 columns of numbers. The top line contains mouse count trigger levels. The remaining 9 lines contain multiplication factors, each with a single implied decimal point, for each of the trigger levels. Each of the 9 lines represents the acceleration level (curve) for the mouse driver's corresponding /An command line option, where n is the acceleration level number. The maximum mouse count trigger level (in the top row) is 127, and the minimum is 1. The maximum effective multiplication factor (in the lower 9 rows) is 32767 (representing 3276.7), and the minimum is 1 (representing .1). An example table for the 200 cpi mouse follows. The default file that comes with the mouse is named ULTRARES.TAB. Example table_file 10 13 16 21 26 32 38 45 53 61 70 80 93 106 119 127 1 2 3 4 5 7 9 10 10 10 10 10 11 12 14 16 6 8 10 10 10 10 10 10 11 11 12 14 16 19 21 23 8 10 10 10 11 12 13 14 16 17 19 20 21 23 26 28 10 10 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 20 22 24 28 31 35 10 10 11 11 13 15 17 18 20 22 23 27 30 34 39 42 11 12 13 14 16 18 20 22 23 26 29 30 35 40 45 50 11 14 15 17 19 20 22 25 27 30 34 39 44 50 60 70 12 17 19 20 22 24 27 30 34 38 43 51 63 75 85 100 12 20 30 40 54 70 98 118 140 160 190 220 260 300 380 504 HOW TO INTERPRET THE ACCELERATION CURVE TABLE The trigger level count values that head each column represent sample readings taken from the mouse. They are called trigger levels because any sample containing that many counts or less gets multiplied by one of the factors in lower rows of the corresponding column. For example, assume you selected acceleration level 7: multiplication factors in the 8th row will be used. Now assume the driver receives a sample of 20 counts. Since 20 falls within the range of 16 through 21, the 4th column will be used. The 8th row and 4th column intersect at the multiplication factor 16 (representing 1.6). The driver sends the value 32 (because 1.6 x 20 = 32) to the application program. It thereby "accelerates" the movement of the mouse. HOW TO MODIFY THE ACCELERATION CURVE TABLE You may adjust the table as you see fit, by changing the trigger levels (numbers at the top of each column) and/or the multiplication factors. You may also add columns as long as no more than 20 are in the table. You should keep the original table for future reference. After changing the table, reload it into the mouse driver (which should already be installed) by running ULTRARES as already described. If you experiment with the table and find different values to be more appropriate with your application, please contact MSC technical support with your recommendations.