For some time I lived with a an erratic scroll wheel on a Pi4.
The pointing worked perfectly, scrolling down worked fine, but
scrolling up was erratic, sometimes not reacting and occasionally
"bouncing" backwards. At first I suspected mechanical trouble in
the scroll wheel but could find nothing demonstrably wrong.

Finally, on a whim, I unplugged the mouse from the keyboard hub
and plugged it directly into the remaining USB 2.0 port on the Pi.
That completely solved the problem.

Anybody got a hint what might be going on? I can understand a
USB hub not working right, but it's much harder to understand
how it could work right for pointing and wrong for scrolling.

The mouse and keyboard are both elderly Dell take-offs from
scrapped computers. The keyboard is model sk-8125, the mouse
is model mo56uo.

Thanks for reading, and insights appreciated.

bob prohaska

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 28/02/2021 19:29, bob prohaska wrote:

For some time I lived with a an erratic scroll wheel on a Pi4.
The pointing worked perfectly, scrolling down worked fine, but
scrolling up was erratic, sometimes not reacting and occasionally
"bouncing" backwards. At first I suspected mechanical trouble in
the scroll wheel but could find nothing demonstrably wrong.

Finally, on a whim, I unplugged the mouse from the keyboard hub
and plugged it directly into the remaining USB 2.0 port on the Pi.
That completely solved the problem.

Anybody got a hint what might be going on? I can understand a
USB hub not working right, but it's much harder to understand
how it could work right for pointing and wrong for scrolling.

The mouse and keyboard are both elderly Dell take-offs from
scrapped computers. The keyboard is model sk-8125, the mouse
is model mo56uo.

Thanks for reading, and insights appreciated.

bob prohaska

You too ...

I had been chasing this fault in Debian on a desktop, where scrolling
the mousewheel upwards in a webpage sends the browser back to a previous
page, rather than to the top of the page!

It was driving me mad, so investigated with xev.

==========

My xev output,

adrian@desktop:~$ xev

ButtonPress event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x4c00001,
root 0x1cb, subw 0x4c00002, time 19590480, (42,57), root:(1032,373),
state 0x0, button 8, same_screen YES

ButtonPress event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x4c00001,
root 0x1cb, subw 0x4c00002, time 19590480, (42,57), root:(1032,373),
state 0x0, button 9, same_screen YES

Button 8/9 is normally for forward/backwards "horizontal" scrolling.

Bug 443284 - mousewheel generating bogus button events
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=443284

has a workaround.

--
Adrian C

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 19:29:00 -0000 (UTC)
bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:

Anybody got a hint what might be going on? I can understand a
USB hub not working right, but it's much harder to understand
how it could work right for pointing and wrong for scrolling.

Supply voltage drop perhaps.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 19:29:00 +0000, bob prohaska wrote:

For some time I lived with a an erratic scroll wheel on a Pi4.
Anybody got a hint what might be going on? I can understand a USB hub
not working right, but it's much harder to understand how it could work
right for pointing and wrong for scrolling.

The mouse and keyboard are both elderly Dell take-offs from scrapped computers. The keyboard is model sk-8125, the mouse is model mo56uo.

Thanks for reading, and insights appreciated.

I had the same problem recently with a Logitech M105 mouse: scroll wheel
was erratic, but clickers and optical tracking were fine. The problem
turned out to be a mouse full of hair and dust that interfered with the
optical sensors on the scroll wheel. Taking it apart, there's one screw
that holds the Logitech together, cleaning out the collected gunge inside
it and reassembly fixed it completely.

I've had consistently good experiences with the Logitech mice: its been
my goto brand fir at least a decade.

Or, there are plenty of that model mo56uo Dell mice on eBay for around
$US 8


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 19:29:00 +0000, bob prohaska wrote:

For some time I lived with a an erratic scroll wheel on a Pi4.
Anybody got a hint what might be going on? I can understand a USB hub
not working right, but it's much harder to understand how it could work
right for pointing and wrong for scrolling.

The mouse and keyboard are both elderly Dell take-offs from scrapped
computers. The keyboard is model sk-8125, the mouse is model mo56uo.

Thanks for reading, and insights appreciated.

I had the same problem recently with a Logitech M105 mouse: scroll wheel
was erratic, but clickers and optical tracking were fine. The problem
turned out to be a mouse full of hair and dust that interfered with the optical sensors on the scroll wheel. Taking it apart, there's one screw
that holds the Logitech together, cleaning out the collected gunge inside
it and reassembly fixed it completely.

I've had consistently good experiences with the Logitech mice: its been
my goto brand fir at least a decade.

Or, there are plenty of that model mo56uo Dell mice on eBay for around
$US 8

After reading the replies to this thread I decided to try putting
the USB cable for the mouse back into the hub port on the keyboard.
It was meant to be a null experiment, replicating the original problem.

To my utter surprise, the mouse scrollwheel seems to work perfectly.
It looks as if the solution was merely to re-seat the connector.
Evidently it was some sort of bad connection, much to my astonishment.

Thanks to all for reading and replying!

bob prohaska

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 28/02/2021 19:29, bob prohaska wrote:

I can understand a
USB hub not working right, but it's much harder to understand
how it could work right for pointing and wrong for scrolling.

Blind guess based on experience. Faulty hardware is often pattern
sensitive...

...example if you have hardware that commonly sets a bit high, no data
in which that bit is already high will notice...

I had a really nasty bug to trace years ago - program transfer from
floppy to hard drive was being corrupted. But only when a video capture
card was installed...turned out that a unique combination of address and
I/O (this on an *86 hardware platform with I/O instructions) coupled
with a terrible piece of hardware design - massive propagation delays in
the decoder - meant that if you happened to have the lower order bytes
of the address on te bus correspond to the video card, and then changed
them and raised an IO request for data from the floppy, the card would
still think it was 'selected' and would grab the IO bus. And stuck a
couple of FFHs on the data stream.

We wrote to the manufacturer of the card showing them detailed timing calculations as to why it was a POS. They replied that no one else had complained and it was nothing wrong

People think hardware works, or it doesn't., In reality it can go very
flaky - low voltage, marginal timing, temperature stability issues.

Code works or it doesn't yes - apart from issues with asynchronous
interrupts etc. Take off a coder hat and put on an analogue hardware hat
and its perfectly possible to see why stuff can work most of the time
but crash some of the time.



--
"And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch".

Gospel of St. Mathew 15:14

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 1.3.21 6.37, bob prohaska wrote:

Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 19:29:00 +0000, bob prohaska wrote:

For some time I lived with a an erratic scroll wheel on a Pi4.
Anybody got a hint what might be going on? I can understand a USB hub
not working right, but it's much harder to understand how it could work
right for pointing and wrong for scrolling.

The mouse and keyboard are both elderly Dell take-offs from scrapped
computers. The keyboard is model sk-8125, the mouse is model mo56uo.

Thanks for reading, and insights appreciated.

I had the same problem recently with a Logitech M105 mouse: scroll wheel
was erratic, but clickers and optical tracking were fine. The problem
turned out to be a mouse full of hair and dust that interfered with the
optical sensors on the scroll wheel. Taking it apart, there's one screw
that holds the Logitech together, cleaning out the collected gunge inside
it and reassembly fixed it completely.

I've had consistently good experiences with the Logitech mice: its been
my goto brand fir at least a decade.

Or, there are plenty of that model mo56uo Dell mice on eBay for around
$US 8

After reading the replies to this thread I decided to try putting
the USB cable for the mouse back into the hub port on the keyboard.
It was meant to be a null experiment, replicating the original problem.

To my utter surprise, the mouse scrollwheel seems to work perfectly.
It looks as if the solution was merely to re-seat the connector.
Evidently it was some sort of bad connection, much to my astonishment.

Thanks to all for reading and replying!

bob prohaska

This has a strong smell of a mouse cranky with supply voltage, or
maybe a marginal cable. I'd get a powered USB hub, connect that to
the keyboard outlet and connect the mouse to the hub. If everything
works OK, just ditch the mouse and get a good one.

--

-TV

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Dana Mon, 1 Mar 2021 04:37:29 -0000 (UTC), bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> napis'o:

Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 19:29:00 +0000, bob prohaska wrote:

For some time I lived with a an erratic scroll wheel on a Pi4.
Anybody got a hint what might be going on? I can understand a USB hub
not working right, but it's much harder to understand how it could work
right for pointing and wrong for scrolling.

The mouse and keyboard are both elderly Dell take-offs from scrapped
computers. The keyboard is model sk-8125, the mouse is model mo56uo.

Thanks for reading, and insights appreciated.

I had the same problem recently with a Logitech M105 mouse: scroll wheel
was erratic, but clickers and optical tracking were fine. The problem
turned out to be a mouse full of hair and dust that interfered with the
optical sensors on the scroll wheel. Taking it apart, there's one screw
that holds the Logitech together, cleaning out the collected gunge inside
it and reassembly fixed it completely.

I've had consistently good experiences with the Logitech mice: its been
my goto brand fir at least a decade.

Or, there are plenty of that model mo56uo Dell mice on eBay for around
$US 8

After reading the replies to this thread I decided to try putting
the USB cable for the mouse back into the hub port on the keyboard.
It was meant to be a null experiment, replicating the original problem.

To my utter surprise, the mouse scrollwheel seems to work perfectly.
It looks as if the solution was merely to re-seat the connector.
Evidently it was some sort of bad connection, much to my astonishment.

Thanks to all for reading and replying!

Probably oxidation on the connector. Either or both.
Plug it in and out dozen times. That should "clean" it a bit.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)