ICA Technology Aero IM-PC20
Spaceship styling, three sensitivity modes and a seventy-page manual.
Continuing the tour of mice with design awards.
1989: a futuristic symmetrical three-button case, rather like a UFO. Some people see echoes of the Lincoln Futura and similar cars. The 1991 iF Design Award description explicitly calls it spaceship-like.
I couldn't find an electronic manual, but an original turned up in the Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology. After a quest involving a reader's card and getting the manual delivered to the correct branch, I finally enjoyed its seventy — seventy! — pages.
It is astonishingly detailed. Stretching mouse setup and operation over thirty pages takes some effort. A real pedant wrote this.
Calling the modes Slow, Normal and Fast instead of Slow, Normal and Turbo would have saved us guessing what the T button meant. Slow, at 40 dpi, is for drawing; Dr. Halo Plus was included, something like an early AutoCAD. Turbo, at 1,000 dpi, is for large screens. Remember, anything above 640 × 480 counted as large.
A second switch selects two protocols: MS for Microsoft compatibility, which someone even connected to Windows 10, and PC for Mouse Systems compatibility and Sun equipment. Included software could configure the buttons for left-handed use and assign actions in a selection of supposedly popular applications.
The manual also tells us the mouse was tested over 480 km, so they recommend cleaning it properly. I'll put the instructions in the comments for anyone needing a refresher.
