Where can I get a mouse for Mac OS 9? New ones say they're for Mac OS X.

Just get a plain two button mouse. In OS 9 you may not have all the features that you would have in OS X, but it should still work. The package probably means that it is compatible with 10.4 & USB 2.0, but it will work at lower OSs & USB1.1.

I use a two button/scroll wheel PC type mouse with my G3 laptop running OS 9 & Tiger. You could probably go to a used computer store & get a mouse for a few $.

 Cheers, Tom 😉

The last versions of OS 9 were pretty good about right mouse button support. Most mice should work fine.

Just bear in mind that a USB mouse will not become active until the OS actually loads if you are using it through a PCI card. This shouldn't make any difference in the normal course of things, but just don't expect things like holding the mouse button on startup to open a drive door to work.

Hi, Jake -

Often one button on a multi-button mouse will be recognized as a default mouse button and be usable before the mouse software has loaded.

Regarding mouse software, my experience has been that Microsoft, Logitech, and Kensington mouses are usually okay from a hardware perspective, but that their software falls a bit short, especially with regard to scroll wheels.

I use Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer mouses with my G4s running OS 9 (I've also tried both Kensington and Logitech mouses, but prefer the shape and feel of the MS ones).

However, instead of installing the MS software that came with them, I use USB Overdrive - it makes all of the mouse features smoothly available including all five buttons and the scrollwheel, yet needs no extra extensions in order to do that - just a control panel (it does install a couple of extra extensions, but these can be disabled when using a mouse). One of the features of USBOD I especially like is that you can have different functions set for each of the buttons in different programs, and the mouse behavior changes automatically to the set for the active program, on the fly.