An Apple Macintosh 512Ke computer, pictured with an Apple HD 20 hard disk drive, Apple keyboard, and a Commodore Amiga 3000 "pregnant" mouse

Connecting an Amiga mouse to a classic Macintosh

I find myself without a classic Apple M0100 mouse for my Macintosh 512K Enhanced, which sure makes it hard to test out some repairs. While I work out how to get one in reasonable shape for a reasonable amount of money, I still needed something to test with. Turns out, the classic Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST all have the same theory of operation, a quadrature encoder sends X, Y signals to pins, 1 or more mouse buttons send a signal. Luckily, all of these quadrature mice send the same approximate signals, so it’s a rewire job. Want to wire an Amiga mouse to a Mac, or vice versa?

SignalMac PinAmiga Pin
Chassis GND1
+5v27
Signal GND38
X142
X254
n/c6
Button76
Y183
Y291

One interesting note, most of the Macintosh mouse pinout diagrams label X1/X2, Y1/Y2 on the Mac mouse differently than the above table. I think these are making assumptions about how Apple labeled these pins. If you wire X2->X2, Y2->Y2 based on those pinouts, you’ll have a reversed cursor in both directions.

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