The Resurrection of a Nine-Year-Old Mouse

In recent months, I have found that when my mouse wheel is scrolling, it goes up and down randomly, which seriously affects browsing the web. I even subconsciously press and hold the left button to operate the browser's slide bar.

After searching the Tmall shopping records, I purchased it on September 26, 2015, 9 years ago. I even remember why I bought it at that time. Because the National Day holiday is coming soon, I will use it to play games.

Time is a ruthless butcher's knife. Nowadays, PC games can no longer be played. Only this mouse is left to accompany you, which can be regarded as a memory of youth.

Back to the topic, the above phenomenon has a proper name called "wheel rollback". How to solve it?

Searching with the keyword "Razer mouse wheel" on the Internet, I found that the hard-core solution is to replace the wheel encoder. It probably means buying an encoder online, replacing the old one, and using a soldering iron!

My mouse is only 169 yuan in total, and I also need to use the whole soldering iron, which is not worth the gain! Although I can weld, I don’t need to. I might as well buy a new one.

Suddenly, I came across this Zhihu post.

Turn it upside down and roll it back and forth on your trouser legs, and the nine-year-old mouse miraculously comes to life.

Really cyber Huatuo, electronic Bian Que.

The question is, why does such a seemingly outrageous operation work?

My guess is: when turning it upside down, the dust was turned away.

Because I have seen on Douyin before how mouse wheel scrolling works. It probably looks like the picture below:

To put it simply, when the LED light passes through the grille, the photosensitive element senses the change and converts it into an electrical signal. After being converted into an electrical signal, the chip or computer processes it.

If the mouse is used for a long time, it may accumulate dust. If it is turned upside down, the dust will fall off. In this way, the factors that originally blocked the signal will be removed. In fact, many people can solve the problem by blowing air on the middle roller.

I remember another left-click combo, and I also used a blade to remove the dirt and it returned to normal.

Of course, this solution is applicable when there is no physical damage to the device. It is very interesting that a 9-year-old mouse is still strong after simple treatment under heavy use.

This mouse uses TTC's encoder, which can be replaced by yourself without any trouble. It is produced by Huizhou Zhengpai Kedian Co., Ltd.

What does an encoder look like? Official website pictures

The numbers in the middle of the picture seem to refer to different installation heights and are suitable for different styles of mice. Just ask the seller when purchasing.

There is a Taobao store that sells Jinlun encoders for 9 yuan each.

The lifespan of 2 million cycles is the same brand used by Razer. It may not be from Jinlun, but it should also have a million-cycle rating. No wonder it doesn't break down even after nine years.

If you open a repair shop in a small place and replace the encoder, you can probably charge dozens of yuan, which is a small profit.

After such an exploration, with normal use, the lifespan of the mouse is estimated to be more than 5 years, which is longer than the career of a 35-year-old programmer facing unemployment😭.