Hi, twtwtw,
well, without having it in hand I can't really see how it's supposed to attach or what exactly it does.
Photos of the battery cover and spring disasembled and assembled.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lpw15yseg0a5w2m/Battery%20cover%20unassembled.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/56sbnv31usewthr/Battery%20cover%20assembled.jpg
I just have the pieces laying in the correct position, no permanent repair. Would have simply thrown them on the scanner, but the all-in-one unit with scanner that was installed was removed yesterday to be donated with the laptop mentioned in my original post.
The round end of the spring pops the battery cover off when the latch is released. The other end depresses the switch in the mouse when the slide in the battery cover is moved.
it looks like they can be taken apart - there's a teardown of a different model at ifixit.com, which you might be able to adapt.
The wired version of a mouse similar in construction to that unit came with my iMac. When the trackball stopped scrolling, I found out you had to end up using Super Glue to reassemble, and that's no way to design a product, IMO. But, I always hated that mouse, it didn't fit my hand, and typing on the keyboard reminds me of the horrible "chiclet" keypads of yesteryear, and I replaced both with an old Apple Pro keyboard and a Microsoft USB wireless mouse that actually fit my hand!!! What a concept! 😀
The thing at the top (between the +/-) looks more like a latch than a switch to me. is it holding the bottom plate in place?
There is the proverbial Tab A on the cover that fits into Slot B on the mouse, but the the sliding thing does nothing to affect the tab/slot that I can determine. Possibly, it may control the amount of movement vertically you apply to get a "mouse press", but at the moment I've not tested that theory.
I think the +/- bit really is just a guide for battery installation.
"Illogical", as Mr. Spock would say. The orientation of the +/- is 90º to the battery installation. And both batteries are installed with the + end towards this end of the mouse.
if attaching the the piece of metal is just a matter of broken pins, though, you could try super-gluing it in place.
Super glue was my first thought, but spring steel is hard to get liquid type adhesives to adhere to. I also thought of using Gorilla Glue, if you're familiar with it. It's hard to find stuff that Gorilla Glue won't bond to with some degree of success.
I dug out my freestanding magnifier, and it almost looks like the "pins" probably had an upper, smaller in dia. part, that may have been melted over the spring to hold the spring in place.
and no matter what you say, tape is always an option. 🙂
LOL! Hope that was a joke for real, as that never an option for my repairs. If done, it's cheap and cheezy, as if you don't care what kind of workmanship you have.
With respect to the link... did you
seriously keep hitting that link and sitting through the sarcasimation, rather than typing the words into a new google window yourself? Heck, you could have copy/pasted the text instead of typing it, or bookmarked the resulting google page for future reference, or..., or...
To start with, Google is almost never my search engine of first choice. Why? I've not trusted them with anything since they were caught violating privacy issues, more than once. My first choices are DuckDuckGo, Startpage, and IxQuick, because those search engines do not track your searches and surfing habits. Where I go and what I do is no one's business. I don't want that info given/sold/stolen by marketers, spammers, scammers, hackers, et. al.
Startpage and IxQuick appear to be from the same folks.
So I have all the trackers blocked as best as possible, Javascript disabled, etc., which makes getting the encrypted URL to work is, well, extra work. 😀 Simply copying and pasting the encrypted URL is therefore blocked. I see no value other than shorter typed links in email, forums, newsgroups, etc. to the shortened links, plus making bucks for the folks at TinyURL and others that create them for you. And of course, they are tracking you to.
So, as you may have guessed by now, I do not use Safari. <grin>
I didn't plan on doing it more than once, but had to when you replied. And I've already got too ****** many bookmarks. 😀
Dude.
And I'm neither a Dude or Dudette. But been online before there was a world wide web, and a 1200 baud modem was state of the art.
It seems to me that you are suffering from a chronic case of missing-the-point. The first time you clicked that link it was me wasting your time; my bad, but gotcha, laughs all around.
Did not miss the point, and I am not laughing. Wasting the time of your friends is one thing, wasting the time of strangers is simply bad manners.
Any time you clicked it after that you knew what was going to happen, so you were wasting your own time. You're complaining that your time is being wasted because you just won't google it yourself - what am I supposed to do with that except 😁 ?
I will plead guilty to assuming that Apple would have documentation on their own website, n'cest-ce pas? (To save you some Googling and unencrypting URLs, http://www.yourdictionary.com/n-est-ce-pas) If Apple had the info on their site, the seach engine would/should have found that link, and I would than have wasted my time with a Google search when it shouldn't have been necessary. I learned a long time ago, to always, always check the mfgr.'s site first for the correct information.