In this episode, we will be destroying an HP USB Mouse, Model: M-UB48. The mouse originally came with an HP Pavilion PC, and was never used (was replaced on day one by a Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer, which will also be destroyed in later episodes). In the next episode, we will be destroying an HP Keyboard that came along with this mouse :-)

Here is our victim now:

The cord of this mouse is particularly short, under 3 feet [about 70cm]. It obviously is meant to plug into the HP keyboard...

The one and only tool we will be using is a trusty "4 in 1" screw driver.

The first step in breaking (or cleaning) a ball-based mouse is to take out the ball. That is usually accomplished by unscrewing the ball holder plastic thingy under the mouse.

If we were interested in cleaning the mouse, we would wash the ball, etc., and then would close it up again. Unfortunately for the mouse, we don't want to clean it. We want to destroy it.

Next step is to unscrew the one and only screw that's holding this thing together. Older mice have more screws (old MS mouse had 2 screws, old IBM mouse had 3, etc.)

We can now just pull the pieces apart...

Fact: A ball mouse is actually an optical mouse. It is also based on LEDs.

There are light-emitting diodes and light detecting diodes called photodiodes. These are set side by side, separated by a wheel with slits. When the wheel moves, the diodes detect these slits. There are 2 pairs of these, one for X-axis, and one for Y-axis.

The large center wheel also operates on the same principle, but the LED is a bit bigger:

Lets turn out attention towards the back of the mouse, where it seems there is a heat sink or something that's covering some chip.

The chip it is covering is a Logitech microcontroller. This is the brain of the mouse. This is essentially a Logitech mouse with an HP cover on it.

Anyway. We've accomplished our goal of turning a perfectly good mouse into a pile of garbage:

Until next time...