[robespierre]

The Sun optical mice all require a metal pad with lines. They do not track well or at all on other surfaces. The pads for the Type 4 and Type 5 mice are different, with a different color of ink and different grid pitch. Type 4 requires a 200 lines/inch pad, 370-1368. Type 5 requires a 300 lines/inch pad, 370-1399 or 370-1663.

As a fallback, you can use a sheet of paper with very fine lines. You need a high-resolution printer for best results. Here are some example PostScript programs:

%!PS-Adobe-2.0
%%Title: grid for optical mouse pad
%%Creator: Sebastian Marius Kirsch <***@moebius.inka.de>
%%Pages: 1
%%EndComments
/inch { 72 mul } bind def
/cm { 2.54 div inch } bind def
/mm { 10 div cm } bind def
/width 21 cm def
/height 29.7 cm def
/spacing 1 def

.25 setlinewidth

0 spacing height {
newpath
0 exch moveto
width 0 rlineto
stroke
} for

0 spacing width {
newpath
0 moveto
0 height rlineto
stroke
} for

showpage

%!PS-Adobe-2.0
%% Sun 3 mouse pad
%% Copyright 1987, BeakSoft Inc.
%% All Rights Reserved
%% Permission is granted to copy and use this without charge as long
%% as the copyright notices remain intact.
%%
%%

gsave
90 rotate
/ZapfChancery-MediumItalic findfont 24 scalefont setfont
5 -40 moveto
(This is a mouse pad. It works!) show
( 1987, BeakSoft Inc.)
dup
stringwidth pop
10.9 72 mul
exch sub
dup /copyr exch def
-40 moveto
show
/Symbol findfont 24 scalefont setfont
(\343)
dup
stringwidth pop
copyr exch sub
-40 moveto
show
grestore

.8 setlinewidth
50 0 moveto
250
{ 2.4 0 rmoveto gsave 0 11 72 mul rlineto stroke grestore } repeat

.6 setlinewidth
50 0 moveto
300 { 0 2.8 rmoveto gsave 8.5 72 mul 0 rlineto stroke grestore } repeat

showpage

You can delete the text from the first "gsave" to the first "grestore" and it will remove the writing from the second file.