Greetings and welcome to LGR and, we're taking a look at hardware and software that is odd
Forgotten and obsolete
Much like my beard and hair at the moment
They're there all three yeah, so yeah, it was time to get rid of them. [the] beard is gone hair is gone
[well] the hair is still here. It's just not down here anymore. It's right here. That is uh it's a thing so
Get over it
Yes, what we're going to talk about today is the ultra felix and if you happen to know what that is then?
Well your stranger than me because [I] had no friggin clue up until very recently but before we talk about that bit of strange
Oddware, let's talk about something that's not so odd that is the computer mouse. It's an input device. Where your
device with input
Into your computer any way you use it. You know you hold it. You click and scroll and
You move it around on your desk your your mouse. Pad or your balls, whatever works. Why would you do that?
That's a stupid thing to say I'm immature and that's what you do
Whatever surface you have you use the mouse to do things with now the other thing is something else that involves balls
Which would be the trackball which I don't have I
do have one [but] it's it's up there I
Don't know why I should really get it down, but I am lazy anyway. Here's what a trackball looks like if you're somehow not familiar
anyway, it's like a mouse except that you move the ball around with your thumb, or
finger
tudes whatever you have handy to do that with and
It moves the cursor around while the actual device doesn't move around on the desk. So you're not moving your wrist. You're just
Doing that making sounds
well what we have today is the Ultra Felix and it attempts to somehow merge the two and they
Just strange monstrosity. Yes, it looks like this here uh
This thing cracks me up. [uh] let's let's take a look at it. Now shall we alright
So here is the Ultra Felix before we go any further
I just want to thank luke for sending this to me you are awesome for
Thinking out for the odd. We're enthusiasts out there namely me
I don't know. How many more there are I'm sure you guys exist, but hey whatever
This odd. We're enthusiast. It's quite. Happy with this thing because it's odd so yeah, it really is
meant to be a mix of a mouse and a trackball pretty much you know the thing is it just
Sits stationary on your desk. It's got these [little] rubber feet here and
the whole idea is you plop it down and
You have this
Which moves around on the [top] of it?
Now apparently this thing was also made for other systems like the macintosh in fact it might have come out for that first I am
Having trouble finding much concrete information on this at all, but yeah, I know there was at least one in
1994 the Macintosh this one is for the ibm PC and compatibles
and it actually has a PS2 port so I'm assuming this is a
PS2 port I'm not assuming that I know that the PS2 port but I mean assuming
This is a slightly later variant because I've seen some [pictures] of other ones that have more like up
thing
There it looks even more uncomfortable than this freak does apparently the original one cost
169 us dollars this thing wasn't cheap. That's what you had to pay for innovation or a complete and total garbage who knows find out
Alright, so yeah, it's me. It's not very big it's you know. It's comparable. I guess to like a trackball size
Here's a 5-2 quarter [inch] floppy. It's pretty comparable to [that], so
Yeah, I mean, it's it's not huge or anything, and it sits on your desk
And it takes up a smaller footprint than what a mouse would need to get similar results without super high sensitivity settings
So I think that was really the appeal of this was that you don't have to have or
desk space to do that or if you [just] don't like
moving
As you like your hand like ever or your arm?
Then you don't have to with a mouse you have to do this
With this on the other hand all you have to do is is this
Yeah, that's pretty sensual
Except it's not it's things Frickin Clunky is crap
Here's the thing about this, so
You kind of hold it like this. I guess these little like
Whatever the frick that is
It's supposed to be where your fingers go. I cannot get comfortable with this thing whatsoever. I've tried,
We're just not compatible. We haven't hit it off at all. I'm probably not going to ask it out again. Sorry. Sorry Felix
[it's] not you. It's me, but actually it is you
beside the point this is
Interesting though the fact that it does move around here. I think it is an interesting idea these are
Supposedly one-to-one with all four corners of your monitor
So [the] bottom right corner is the bottom left makes a little weird
Using it on wide screens because you know this is a four to three aspect ratio here, so it's kind of weird
But whatever they weren't like wizards that could look in the future, so that's fine
Now you do have three mouse buttons though, which is cool. You have the left button right button and the middle they click
that's cool, and just kind of glides around and it works Sort of I
Don't know why does this though like?
Really maybe yeah if you're holding it at an angle, but that completely screws up
everything
to me uh
I know some people hold their mouse at an angle, but wouldn't you just like?
whoop
fixed but no, I'm
Sure somebody found that useful
I don't whatsoever anyway. You don't need [to] drivers for this you just plug it straight in and it works
[I] think there was some software for it mine doesn't come with it. I don't know what had changed
Was meant to work in windows 3.1 and 95?
Especially this one 95 is a plug-and-play device, so it works just fine you plug it and you play with it
Wow, innuendo let's not go there. Let's take a look at this thing in action
Well this little bit of action here is windows 3.11 and it's good. It's also. Good is we have a mouse cursor
You can see it's moving around. That's what we want. What a mouse does
It curses so you can see I'm moving it to each corner here
in theory what it should do is the actual physical corners of where the mouse lays in the
inset of the felix
should match [up] with your screen so that
Should be yeah the top left corner. [I] mean maybe even get some sound in here. It's top left corner
That's the bottom left bottom right and top right that
Works it works once it calibrates itself. It works pretty, okay
And you know that's kind of helpful
Okay, you can kind of see where it's not sometimes
Maybe you can't
I'm gonna see if I can demonstrate that it's kind of helpful when you
Really don't want to have to guess where you're going to be pointing?
Which if you're a heavy computer user and know a mouse you're going to know anyway
I don't know really what the other thing is because you can't lift this up at all
I have an instinctive need desire to lift my mouse when I need to move it around further and
Well, you know with this you don't so I end up lifting the whole freaking thing off the desk which is stupid
feel restricted with this thing and the four corners that's fine, but
Say you're doing [something]. [that's] a little more [mouse] intensive
Like a game for instance, and I know that's not what this is made for but it is useless for Games
I guess it has its uses here. I mean you know it's it's sort of easy enough to browse around and look at things
You know sure?
But at the same time because of the way it is
Calibrated or it calibrates itself you know with the sensitivity like that
It's just it's a little weird [you] don't have too much really fine
sensitivity in
Here because there's like there's like a dead zone in the middle for one thing like right now
I'm moving it and it should be moving around in circles, but it's not
So yeah, you have a slight Dead Zone
Very very slight
So tiny little fine eye movements since you know it's like. It's because it's in the very middle. It's like
It's almost like using a touchpad really now that [I] think about it on a laptop
It's kind of touchPad ish except that you have this physical thing that's freaking tied down to the middle of it and it's weird
So yes, it's just quite bizarre and let's go [ahead] and take a look at a game. Just because
So this is Duke3d and this is a terrible terrible example what you know it has mouse usage in it
okay, so what I'm going to do is simply move the mouse forward
Okay, so if I don't do it too much
Then it goes a little bit and stops
And this is this is on a mouse movement at the moment. It's not mouse looked, but anyway, so
But if I put it all the way forward or all the way close to an edge see right here
It still goes like the cursor just keeps going and this is kind of maybe it's a little hard to [visualize]
But I'm just telling you it's it's awkward when you get to the edges, and it hasn't quite
Calibrated it or it doesn't know what to do with what is calibrated so right now
I am not moving crap my hand is not even touching the mouse it just does this and
sometimes you get that when you're just
navigating windows like the mouse Cursor will just keep moving off the edge of the screen or like it's moving off the edge of the
Screen because it thinks it has because it's stupid
you know it kind of works and
I applaud them for trying something different see right now. I'm moving it entirely forward and it's not doing crap
What is wrong?
but if I move it back and then
Okay, now it's fine
So you just you get really uneven sensitivity apparently there is some chip in there that like
Automatically calibrates itself on the fly or something. I'm not entirely sure
What all goes into this but?
It's not ideal. I would much rather use a trackball even though
I don't use track balls and of course I would just much rather use a regular mouse in general
Wow, that's a dumb lizard die
Well anyway, uh yeah?
That is the Ultra Felix a friggin weird little device that cost a crap ton of money back in the day and I
honestly for the life of me can't understand why anybody would buy this over a trackball or just a normal mouse but
Whatever you want weird. Oddware this is weird. Oddware odd odd where strange odd where odd oh?
oh my