Anyone remember those old CAD mice from the 80s? With the custom mousing surface, region-sensitive reticle, and 12+ buttons on the mouse? Those things were so cool...
The digitizers were impressive, but we later switched to a multibutton mouse for AutoCAD (circa R12 for DOS). I think it had 8 auxiliary buttons in a 4x2 grid, along with the primary left and right button. They were great for AutoCAD, as you could put a different osnap on each aux button, but the company disappeared before writing a windows driver.
Hm, I think I meant a mouse. I remember it had a grid of buttons (each with a different purpose, like a ColecoVision controller) and a really elaborate mousing surface.
Found it--it's a Prohance Powermouse 70. Looks like it has the standard left/right buttons, plus 15 additional buttons. Normal config is F1-F10, plus esc, ctrl, user, fn, and enter. The driver allowed you to customize it for apps such as AutoCAD. Typical mechanical ball mouse guts, DE-9 serial connector. Actually pretty high quality, as you'd expect for a CAD peripheral back in the day.
chadaustin's mention of a custom mousing surface makes me think he was looking at a digitizer, although it could have been an old school optical mouse, such as the ones Sun used to use.
