One starts feeling their age when they look back at the boxy, clunky, slow and temperamental personal computers of the 1980's with fond nostalgia. Take me, for example. I was first introduced to the Apple in 1989 when I started writing music on a Mac II running System 6 - which required two floppies (one for the application and one for saving data) and had a total of (hoo-wah!) 256 whole kilobytes of RAM!!

Several operating systems later, my current Mac - a G4  with two 80 GB internal hard drives, two USB ports and 1 GB of RAM - is as far beyond that machine as homo sapiens is the amoeba - yet, I confess there's a certain longing for those old days of cyber-innocence.

It is possible to recapture some of that by modifying your old rectangular ADB mouse to work like Apple's latest, the Mighty Mouse. In fact, its as simple as doing a complete transplant of the latter's inner workings to the former.

What you'll need:

- One Apple ADB Mouse.
- One Apple Mighty Mouse.
- A Dremel Tool and various attachments.
- A small Phillips screwdriver.
- A Swiss Army Knife.
- Various "needle" files
- A soldering iron.
- Plastic cement.
- Some epoxy mastic that works well on plastic.

Opening the two "mice," one finds the relative sizes of the two are remarkably similar, which will make your job much easier.

The first step is to use the Dremel and one of the carving attachments to remove all the inner bumps and ridges of the old ADB mouse, including the opening for the ball. You'll want to glue this shut permanently.

The four photos below show how the Might Mouse mechanism is installed into the ADB mouse housing. Note how the epoxy mastic is used to hold the side buttons and click switch in place.

There won't be enough room for the "squeeze-click" function, however, you should wind up with a "three-click" mouse and a working scroll ball just below the thumb. Although ADB-USB adapters are available, you'll probably want to solder on a USB type A connector eventually.

Best of all, you'll have a very cool-looking mouse with 'vintage' style and cutting-edge functionality...rather like a putting a fuel injected  V-6 into your '32 Chevy Rumble seat Roadster...