Hi,

I think that fourdc has some very good advice. I have quite a collection of old keyboards and mice.

Other things I like to have around are PCI and AGP cards, PCI soundcard and an external 56.6 modem.

On the mouse front, get hold of a serial mouse if you see one. They are very cheap and excellent for troubleshooting. I would guess that just about every operating system/BIOS in the last 12 years ships with a serial mouse driver & support I actually bought one the other day and noticed that it supports 850 Dpi which isn't bad considering that the original Microsoft PS2 Intellimouse was only 400 Dpi.

Another thing when troubleshooting peripherals is to consider what their weaknesses are likely to be. Wireless and infra red devices need batteries.

Infra red likes a clear line of sight. On the other hand wireless can be interfered with by other devices.

USB is a notoriously "loose" connection, and if you connect too many devices at once you may not have enough power to run them all. So try different outlets and one device at a time.

Another thing I have seen is with non-computer devices like heaters, desktop fans and air conditioning. When these devices start to fail they can frequently generate a magnetic field that will give problems. I try to turn off anything not needed to solve the problem including mobile phones.