On March 18, Daniel DiPietro posted on Facebook about adding an A/B switch to his Apple //c.  That way he could leave both a mouse and a joystick connected all the time and just change the switch to use either one.    I have done such things many times in the distant past, but never thought of it for this case.  When I read about it, it made so much sense that I decided to do the same thing.

Tuesday morning I ordered an all female DB9 serial A/B switch and a DB9 Male to Male Serial Cable from two different sellers on eBay.  One said delivery by Saturday and the other by Monday, yet the both came early Friday, yesterday.  Great service from both.  One thing that surprised me was the size of the A/B switch.  In the past I used the Black Box switches and they were quite a bit larger.  This box was about the size of a 100 count package of 3×5 cards.

I plugged in the cable from the Apple //c to the A/B switch and then connected the mouse and the joystick to the A and B ports on the switch.

I tested the mouse with Dazzle Draw and the Joystick with Columns, a Tetris like game.  Both worked as planned, so I printed out labels with my label maker and put them on the switch box.