This is the original blog post this article is based on: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250325-00/?p=110993

IIRC later other manufacturers copied this feature, and the final days of ps2 it was common that a “converter” was bundled with a mouse.

Wikipedia has more detail about this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS/2_port#Conversion_between_PS/2_and_USB

That is probably the coolest thing I’ve read today. Thanks for posting it.

I sort of wondered how they did that, and it makes sense from that point of view – the mouse could do both. Also explains why those adapters probably wouldn’t work on other mice today.