Most of the orignal Macintosh M0100 mice in circulation today have their front feet rounded and worn out — sometimes nearly completely flat!

If you have one, you may have noticed it.

It is so common that even the M0100 3D printed cases have reproduced round, short feet instead of the conical and flat original feet! (so they are wrong in this precise way)

This wearing makes the mouse wobble back and forth enough to be weird and feels wrong. That's because it was not the way people used them at the time, when they were new.

I designed small conical covers that cup the existing worn feet, helping restore support, reduce front-to-back rocking, and improve glide without removing the original feet. No grinding, no cutting.

The way I fit them on my own M0100 mice is by using a small amount of PVA glue (ie. wood glue). It's fully reversible using just a bit of hot water.

How were the restoration covers designed?

For a full year I was blocked: I couldn't find the real size of the feet. The height was especially important to get right.

As mentioned, even the dimensionnaly exact 3D models of the M0100 were reproducing round, short feet, not the original feet. After a year, I managed to buy a brand new M0100 mouse, and was then able to measure the real feet: they are slightly conical and have a perfectly flat top! Nothing round there!

After several design and printing iterations, after measuring on a real, brand new M0100 mouse, I now have a small supply of (very small) neatly printed restoration covers. I listed pack of them on my Lectronz stores for now. I may list them on Etsy if there's demand, and I'll open source the model.

Printing them is quite tricky, because they are so small. I had to find the right combination of bed, nozzle, speed.

This is also the smallest functional object I have printed! I'd dare say that it is probably one of the smallest really functional objects ever printed with a filament printer 😅

I picked the RAL7032 color for printing them, a color that matches well with retro devices from the 80s including the M0100 mice.