Synaptic Touchpad vs. PS2 Mouse

[OldGeezer]

I am using Puppy 2.11 on my old Compaq Presario 1245 laptop. Puppy works extremely well with just one little bump along the road to success. When I boot into Windows 98 both the touchpad *and* the PS2 mouse work simultaneously. With Puppy, only the touchpad works. Given a choice of one or the other I think I'd rather use the mouse as the touchpad is really squirrly.

Anybody know how to get the touchpad and the mouse to work together? If not, can I disable the touchpad and get Puppy to recognize the PS2 mouse instead?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[marksouth2000]

This is almost certainly a BIOS setting. On my Toshibas, one can set the "pointing device" to internal, external, or both. Puppy respects the BIOS setting on both of these portables, so I can (and do) have both working at the same time.

[kirk]

If you're using Xorg, you could try this:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=7955

You might want to boot up ram only, in case it doesn't work. I think it's set up for a pass-through device. Hopefully this will be in Puppy 2.13.

[OldGeezer]

I tried an experiment tonight that resolved my problem. Instead of trying to use a PS2 mouse, I plugged in a genuine serial mouse and it worked just fine. It took over for the touchpad which is okay, too. So, I now have the best of both worlds. I can boot Puppy using the touchpad (no mouse) or the mouse (no touchpad). I'm sure glad I bought the lot of ten serial mice (NOS) from eBay a while back.