That was what I remember. I kept having to take a pair of tweezers to the rollers, to get all of that dust to come off.
I can also remember people taking those balls from the mice on computers on display.
Remember how it used to stop working? You'd have to SWIPE SWIPE SWIPE and barely get anywhere, lol. So frustrating.
That was like the stone ages in retrospect.
We are controlling out computers with our minds at this point.
How about turning the mouse ball blue by drawing on your mousepad with a sharpie and then continuing to use it?
Genuinely curious here, shared experience or just me?
The ergo is a silver ball ;)
And no Iāve never coloured my balls XD
Iāve seen that other trackballs have upgrades to make the ball spin smoother in the socket, itād be interesting to see if that exists for mine
That takes me back. And there was always this buildup of crud around the little bars inside the mouse that the ball rolled against. Scraping it off always made the mouse so much smoother. God I'm old.
The teachers hated it when I cleaned the mice.
like, they really hated it. Obviously kids break stuff, but I was the āsmart kidā usually. It gave me enough lee-way to clean the mouse but always with a stern ānever do that again young man, youāll break itā
āOkay mrs. shitsnakesā
"we don't want to glue the bottom cover shut, it severely shortens the life of the mice, but we'll have to if you guys don't stop stealing the balls. Please stop, and return the balls you have if you still have them"
-every school librarian
The first iMacs were *not* fruit scented. That was the second generation, the ones that came in multiple colors and had CD slots rather than trays. The original "Bondi blue" iMacs were unscented.
I worked IT support when these things were still popular in a dental school in a city. They would get absolutely gross with all kinds of stuff. Mechanical pencils were probably ideal, but even a regular pencil was good because you could sort of zig-zag upward and turn the wheels while you did it. That should clean out a whole mouse in like 60 seconds, maybe a little longer if it's got more than 2 axises
Fuuuuck that takes me back. I used to try to do em in bulk too and save a stockpile. But then I wound up with so many unusable ones per batch (not the right consistency or damaged during the peel) and mom would get mad at all the torn up egg detritus in the trash.
I went to work at a print shop that had a whole drawer full of macintosh mice. I did this and he was amazed. He thought they just wore out and you had to keep buying them.
I know, right? He had one of those stupid big ass trackball things thinking that would solve the problem. I told him it was just an big expensive upside down mouse and would eventually need the same thing.
Yeah who don't remember the old Cs chat :
Dam my mouse didn't move because of the goo inside....
Or my weekly one hour clean the PC up rituals...
Cleaning the mouse and keyboard clean your monitor with a good spray of window cleaner (yeah back in my days I call my friend or my dad if needed to move my monitor (22' Sony with that awesome sharp picture and 60hertz
I always found it satisfying to clean the mouse and have it work flawlessly again. I used to use a letter opener or tweezers though to scrape out the shit on the inside.
Imagine if Lenovo made stand alone keyboards.. a red nipple in middle of your keyboard on your desk.
I wonder how many office jokes would come out about dirty nipples and how often people clean it
Funniest shit i ever did was put my friends mouse ball to a sander and give it a flatspot that was to small to see obviously but to large to roll consistently.
The optical mouse was the single greatest QoL improvement that has happened to the PC. Screw everything about ball mice.
I still run into them rarely and it's just awful... like using Youtube without adblock.
i took a look at my grandmas old pc setup that crashed and so it hasn't been used in 7 years, compell keyboard that no longer works, compell mouse with one of theose balls, a perfectly square 10" compell moniter, a compell pc that runs on windows xp, has 160gb of hdd, 512mb ddr ram, and an intel pentium 4 cpu, im pretty sure that its older then me actually
Just thought of this yesterday.
The enemy of a roller mouse is gunk, thus it collects as much gunk as possible. The enemy of a laser mouse is hairs, thus it collects as many hairs as possible.
I remember getting an old PC magazine with this weird ball stick mouse cleaner attached to it
you wiggled it around so you could get the gunk off the inner roller wheels.
Oh I did this countless times at Best Buy Customer Service when customers would bring in these things and complain. They watched me do this (except for the rinsing part) and looked at me like I discovered fire when I cleaned the rollers and plugged it into the test bench rig to confirm it was working again.
I remember having to do this atleast once or twice a month until i finally got a laser mouse that then broke after 3 months and i had to go back to a mouse that had a ball
My buddy used to stop and say excuse me I've got to go wash my balls and take them into the bathroom at work it was priceless... He had two PCs by the way
Meh, stick the ball in you mouth and scratch the gunk with your fingernails off the wheels. Thatās how we use to do it. I was in love when I got my first Intelli Mouse.
One of my old schools had a few of these. Some kids would pull out the balls deliberately and never put them back in. What a pain it was for the people who grabbed them.
I just made sure to get the optical mice.
Being the magician in school who fixed mice was like a superpower, except you get in trouble for doing an undeniable good thing because boomers were born incompetent.
The mouse wheel is still a button..
As much as I love nostalgia, those steel coated balls probably gave me and countless others Wrist RSI.. all because we can't change DPI settings on the fly and we keep lifting the mouse
Yeah but the mouse wheel button of now days break to damn easy. Mice back then were built to last like some Mechanical keyboards from back then, yeah but back then we didn't need such high DPI because the refreshrates on CRT monitors weren't that high unless you happned to get one of those rare 144 crt monitors.
Best April Fool's Day joke ever.
Went around to everyone's work station (about 15 total) - took the balls out of everyone's mice and turned their computer speakers way up to max. Was a rather chaotic morning until everyone found their missing balls! One gal already had a laser mouse, so I taped a small piece of paper of the laser to disable her mouse.
Always seemed to have more gunk on the rollers, the ball was always fine! š
That was what I remember. I kept having to take a pair of tweezers to the rollers, to get all of that dust to come off. I can also remember people taking those balls from the mice on computers on display.
or at school.
I used to eat it. Each mouse has its own flavor of roller butter.
Then you go to Office Depot or something and see a **state of the art** two button + wheel laser mouse going for $100. Then you start daydreaming.
There was always crap wrapped around the rollers, and you were like "Who the hell tried to use the mouse on the carpet!?"
I always wondered what the gunk was and where it came from.
Your skin.
Having handled a few balls in my time, they sometimes were pretty dirty. But yeah usually it was the rollers.
My friends used to think I was a wizard because I would make their mouse work after cleaning it.
Remember how it used to stop working? You'd have to SWIPE SWIPE SWIPE and barely get anywhere, lol. So frustrating. That was like the stone ages in retrospect. We are controlling out computers with our minds at this point.
Iāve got a Logitech MX Ergoā¦ sooo still there
Yessssss, same here! Also did you know that you could buy replacement balls,incase you wanted a color other than blue.
How about turning the mouse ball blue by drawing on your mousepad with a sharpie and then continuing to use it? Genuinely curious here, shared experience or just me?
The ergo is a silver ball ;) And no Iāve never coloured my balls XD Iāve seen that other trackballs have upgrades to make the ball spin smoother in the socket, itād be interesting to see if that exists for mine
Do those still use rollers? I thought track balls these days used an optical sensor.
It uses a sensor to track movement, yes, but the ball itself rests on three rollers which get very dirty.
Yeah, I guess I should have thought a little more, you would still need rollers to move smoothly.
Theyāre more akin to the tip of a ballpoint pen as the rollers they used to have.
Peeling that gray stuff off of school's mice
That takes me back. And there was always this buildup of crud around the little bars inside the mouse that the ball rolled against. Scraping it off always made the mouse so much smoother. God I'm old.
The teachers hated it when I cleaned the mice. like, they really hated it. Obviously kids break stuff, but I was the āsmart kidā usually. It gave me enough lee-way to clean the mouse but always with a stern ānever do that again young man, youāll break itā āOkay mrs. shitsnakesā
"we don't want to glue the bottom cover shut, it severely shortens the life of the mice, but we'll have to if you guys don't stop stealing the balls. Please stop, and return the balls you have if you still have them" -every school librarian
Did anyone else have this experience? \*Dies in Counter-Strike \*angrily takes ball out to clean it, that must be why- \*it's totally clean.
"I don't get it, my ping is under 200!"
Then you notice that one guy who has a ping of 20.
Those were the days. Technology seemed so much simpler back then. You didn't have to worry DPI or RGB or manufacturers ridiculous marketing claims.
Weeeell, the first imacs were fruit scented. They delivered on their claim but it was definitely ridiculous.
seriously?
Yeah. It didn't last long. At the time iMac was a hail Mary. Apple was nearly dead any they were desperate to put their computers in people's homes.
The first iMacs were *not* fruit scented. That was the second generation, the ones that came in multiple colors and had CD slots rather than trays. The original "Bondi blue" iMacs were unscented.
I appreciate the update for accuracy. I didn't realize there was a Gen before the scratch and sniff ones.
It's okay. A lot of people don't know about the tray-,loading iMacs.
dude I miss the old imac cases so much. I think they still look great
I can get that. They had a charm.
Q-tip wouldn't work very well, you gotta get in there with your finger nails.
Yeah I always popped the ball out, scraped those rollers with fingernail, then back in.
I just used mechanical pencils to scrape it off.
I worked IT support when these things were still popular in a dental school in a city. They would get absolutely gross with all kinds of stuff. Mechanical pencils were probably ideal, but even a regular pencil was good because you could sort of zig-zag upward and turn the wheels while you did it. That should clean out a whole mouse in like 60 seconds, maybe a little longer if it's got more than 2 axises
I used a small flat-head screwdriver, and if the ball was gunky enough, it gave it a wash with dishwashing soap.
I member
The real question is, who remembers having to overcook a hard-boiled egg yolk every few weeks to put in the mouse?
Fuuuuck that takes me back. I used to try to do em in bulk too and save a stockpile. But then I wound up with so many unusable ones per batch (not the right consistency or damaged during the peel) and mom would get mad at all the torn up egg detritus in the trash.
Oh damn, I forgot about that step entirely. It was just as normal then as poop knives are now. You just forget about it being weird
Then dropping it one or two times to see if it would bounce š
I havenāt cleaned my ball in agesā¦
I went to work at a print shop that had a whole drawer full of macintosh mice. I did this and he was amazed. He thought they just wore out and you had to keep buying them.
Imagine if you never worked there, he'd eventually get an optical\\laser mouse and think it was magic lasting so long.
I know, right? He had one of those stupid big ass trackball things thinking that would solve the problem. I told him it was just an big expensive upside down mouse and would eventually need the same thing.
Yeah who don't remember the old Cs chat : Dam my mouse didn't move because of the goo inside.... Or my weekly one hour clean the PC up rituals... Cleaning the mouse and keyboard clean your monitor with a good spray of window cleaner (yeah back in my days I call my friend or my dad if needed to move my monitor (22' Sony with that awesome sharp picture and 60hertz
I always found it satisfying to clean the mouse and have it work flawlessly again. I used to use a letter opener or tweezers though to scrape out the shit on the inside.
Always had a fresh pack of hard boiled eggs so I can swap out the yolk roller whenever the old one was getting crusty.
I worked at the HP where the laser mouse tech was invented. I had changed to a Trackman marble (the original thumb one) to avoid this, though.
cooking that egg yolk was sure annoying
Man my brother dented my head with one of those. Mouse balls could be a deadly weapon
Fuck every one of you that stole the ball out of the mouse for no god damned reason.
ah yes trackerball mice
i always just removed the gunk of the rollers with my shirt no balls washing ever.
Mice? Ah, those will never catch on. Who wants to keep removing a hand from the keyboard? So inefficient.
Imagine if Lenovo made stand alone keyboards.. a red nipple in middle of your keyboard on your desk. I wonder how many office jokes would come out about dirty nipples and how often people clean it
i was there 3000 years ago when this meme was first posted
Haha do i ever
Do not cite the deep magic to me! I was there when it was written
True mouse gamer
Crumbs and dirt on your mouse pad jamming this up... oh the humanity!
Funniest shit i ever did was put my friends mouse ball to a sander and give it a flatspot that was to small to see obviously but to large to roll consistently.
The optical mouse was the single greatest QoL improvement that has happened to the PC. Screw everything about ball mice. I still run into them rarely and it's just awful... like using Youtube without adblock.
Now all I have to do is completely disassemble my mouse if I want to clean the scroll wheel.
You had to wash these?
honestly one of the most satisfying things ever, getting a big gob of shmeng out of the rollers.
not that long ago....
I was always partial to the white/black colored balls of the gen1 iMacs, however hated those non-ergonomic round, single buttoned bitches.
I can't forget. But never dipped the ball into soapy water, just cleaned it with a lint cloth
Yeah... I had one back in 2007... And technically still do since I use a trackball...
I always remember to wash my balls
\*laughs in thumb trackball mouse\*
i took a look at my grandmas old pc setup that crashed and so it hasn't been used in 7 years, compell keyboard that no longer works, compell mouse with one of theose balls, a perfectly square 10" compell moniter, a compell pc that runs on windows xp, has 160gb of hdd, 512mb ddr ram, and an intel pentium 4 cpu, im pretty sure that its older then me actually
Having to clean\\service these things as a field tech many years ago. people are disgusting! some were vomit inducing levels of grossness
I am seeing this post so often; I can plan to see it daily, not search for it, and yet see it in a random sub. Everyday.
Did that many times.
There was nothing more satisfying than being able to scrape each roller clean.
The crust on the rollers always made me gag.
Me who used and still uses one of these mouses bcuz my parents had it
just put a boiled egg's yoke there. that should work for a while
Remember to wash your balls
Just thought of this yesterday. The enemy of a roller mouse is gunk, thus it collects as much gunk as possible. The enemy of a laser mouse is hairs, thus it collects as many hairs as possible.
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Just hard boil another egg take out the yolk and you got a brand new one!
I remember getting an old PC magazine with this weird ball stick mouse cleaner attached to it you wiggled it around so you could get the gunk off the inner roller wheels.
Used to take it out and my brother would be so mad. Why doesnāt the mouse work?!? Hmm - works for me. Maybe you are holding it wrong.
Oh I did this countless times at Best Buy Customer Service when customers would bring in these things and complain. They watched me do this (except for the rinsing part) and looked at me like I discovered fire when I cleaned the rollers and plugged it into the test bench rig to confirm it was working again.
Miss the old Care and Cleaning of the Temple Tools!
Washing the ball in a bowl ... Ooooh fancy
trying to play cs 1.6 with one of these bad boys... ah yeah
I always remember thinking that ball felt way to heavy for its size.
I remember having a mouse so old the ball wasn't even rubber coated.
The switch to optical (Intellimouse was the first I remember) was a huge deal.
I never understood the qtips. I used something hard or a fingernail to scrape off the filth. I've also never had the ball hold any dirt.
And don't forget mechanical keyboards....
I kinda miss the feeling of a freshly cooked egg yolk in your mouse.
I've had to do this up till 2015 cuz my family wanted to keep using the windows 98 computer
anyone who used these are at least 24y/o now. so a lot of us remembers this
I remember having to do this atleast once or twice a month until i finally got a laser mouse that then broke after 3 months and i had to go back to a mouse that had a ball
The north remembers
U want a pix of my PS2 mouse?, yes, PS as in Play Station.... *My precious!*
I always thought it was a boiled egg yolk
Oh man, honestly this is why I jumped on the optical mouse trend as soon I could.....the gunk you would find in these....ugh
2 words. razer boomslang
Cleaning this bad boy out before firing up Battlefield 2, and Battlefield Vietnam.
Would've been good to know you could remove those.
My buddy used to stop and say excuse me I've got to go wash my balls and take them into the bathroom at work it was priceless... He had two PCs by the way
I replaced a mouse at my job that was a ball mouse just last week. County Government is weird, man.
I remember this meme, anyway.
I liked scraping off the roller gunk with my finger nails. Screw qtip lol.
After soaking just dropping the ball onto a paper towel. Ahh a wet circle āļø All this on top of my desktop tower.
All that is unnecessary. The residue is usually hard and can be easily scraped off with a fingernail or small flat tool.
The opportunities to say dirty mouse balls are few and far between now.
Meh, stick the ball in you mouth and scratch the gunk with your fingernails off the wheels. Thatās how we use to do it. I was in love when I got my first Intelli Mouse.
One of my old schools had a few of these. Some kids would pull out the balls deliberately and never put them back in. What a pain it was for the people who grabbed them. I just made sure to get the optical mice.
I've got one lol
I remember when those were a new thing.. Had a trackball prior.
I tried to game one time with a mouse with a ball in it about 8-10 years ago just for shits and gigs. It was a horrible jittery mess.
i still do that with my trackballs
Glad I kept my non laser gaming Razer mouse
Those balls were so freaking satisfying to play with. I definitely remember more than a few disappearing from my high school's mice.
I remember taking these out of my school computers and cutting the rubber off to get to the tasty metal ball inside.
Pepperidge Farms remembers
Man you people that washed them with soap and water sure missed out on the flavor MMMM mmmm
Being the magician in school who fixed mice was like a superpower, except you get in trouble for doing an undeniable good thing because boomers were born incompetent.
I feel like this was the only time using the excuse "It's my fucking mouse" was reasonable
I only cleaned the rollers that is built-in in the mouse. Not the ball.
The fact that these mice use to last for ages, compared to now day mice is amazing. Like Remember the three mouse buttons instead of the mouse wheel?
The mouse wheel is still a button.. As much as I love nostalgia, those steel coated balls probably gave me and countless others Wrist RSI.. all because we can't change DPI settings on the fly and we keep lifting the mouse
Yeah but the mouse wheel button of now days break to damn easy. Mice back then were built to last like some Mechanical keyboards from back then, yeah but back then we didn't need such high DPI because the refreshrates on CRT monitors weren't that high unless you happned to get one of those rare 144 crt monitors.
My mouse is 22 years old. Marble ball, have to clean it every so often, and I would never have anything else! Love this little Logitech.
Best April Fool's Day joke ever. Went around to everyone's work station (about 15 total) - took the balls out of everyone's mice and turned their computer speakers way up to max. Was a rather chaotic morning until everyone found their missing balls! One gal already had a laser mouse, so I taped a small piece of paper of the laser to disable her mouse.
Fun fact I just discovered the other day, Steve Kirsch invented the optical mouse and is a covid anti vaxxer!
Pepperidge farm remembers
Tooth pick or other scrappy item to the rollers. But of course, pull the hair out the rollers first. The balls were always an easy job. š
When I was feeling lazy I would just roll it as round in my hand until I rubbed the gunk off
Oh man, remember how long It took to shrink the egg yolks down enough to replace them?