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Apple II/Macintosh Mouse

Before Cleaning Yellowed

When I got the computer, the mouse's DB9 connector was fused to the rear IO of the Macintosh. The rust had formed a bond, and I had to use needle nose pliers to unscrew the thumb screws. The entire mouse was yellowed, with a very strange radial pattern on the right side that showed an uneven discoloring in the plastic (camera does not show it that well, it is very subtle). I plan on retrobriting this possibly indoors, which will be a first for me.

Rusted SCrew

This is the DB9 connector. I will be cutting this entirely off and repurposing another DB9 connector. While I won't be able to match the original Apple branded moudling, I don't really care since this will be in the rear of the machine, and this machine is not a museum-grade piece to begin with anyways.

The rusted DB9 connector

The screw on the bottom of the mouse shell was rusted, and I feared I may strip the screw. Thankfully it came out in one piece, and I was able to extract it. Straight to the trash with this one. I disasembled the mouse shell, button, and the PCB inside and gave them all a deep clean in the sinnk with dish soap and warm water. Because I did not want to desolder the XY axis rotary mouse assembly I decided to just place it in rubbing alchohol and let it dry.

The rusted DB9 connector

I retrobrited the plastics and reassembled the mouse, here it is pictured. I am not sure why it bleached the plastic unevenly, I have done this same exact process in the past with success so it makes no sense the result would look this inconsistent rhoughout the plastic. The circle pattern you see on the right side was actually present before (perhaps glass was focusing UV in this specific spot? Not sure). FAt the moment I am waiting until I graduate and have more free time to take a DB9 cable (null modem, something I might have laying aroud) so I can repurpose it and solder it to the mouse pin headers.



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