Yes. The current wireless IR camera mice can run for months on a single
AAA cell.
But with 500 mA of power available to a cord type USB mouse, there's no
guarantee that the designers were careful. With that big of a power
budget, the PS/2 port may not be able to handle all the kewl blue LEDs,
heated mouse, etc. So an external supply might be called for,
Well, yeah.. all the feature filled devices will need another
consideration.
Right. The adapter would have to be there at boot time and stay there.
The adapter can handle hot mouse plugging on the USB bus.
Well, only if the adapter gutz can handshake with each new mouse as they
do not all appear the same to the USB host, which you'll have to create
and hard code the 'driver(s)' for.
It might also be possible to use multiple pointing devices on the USB
side and let the adapter integrate the message streams. Much like my
laptop understands both an external mouse plus its touch pad
simultaneously. It just has to reject anything non PS/2 mouse.
I have a keyboard here that has 25 extra 'other' buttons on it. In
Windows 7, without any driver (the kbd is 7 years old) it 'sees'some
keys, like the audio control keys and media player keys. The cut and
paste keys work and the power key works, but the mouse scroll wheel along
the left side here does not get 'seen' without the driver for the kbd.
Installing that causes the logitech to get angry.
I've got one. They are nice. Particularly in a shop where there's no
useful surface for a standard mouse.
They are awesome for everything, including gaming. Great replacement
for a joystick. If I had to fly a plane where the stick was attached "by
wire", I'd rather have a thumb wheel. Maybe with a stick on the side in
case someone wanted or needed some fast recovery response.
I should have bought 6 when they were cheap. Just like the old 5.5
digit HP multimeters we were getting on ebay for $150 each when companies
were selling out old gear. Now they are harder to find, and grab a lot
more than a few years back. I could nearly double what I paid for mine,
if not more, since I can verify its function against several that had
paid calibrations (which these things rarely actually need).