performance of USB mouse initialization on startup

[Richard Barnette]

"And for my next trick..."

Initialization for PS/2 compatible mice uses a number of explicit calls
to usleep().  The code mostly lives in src/pnp.c, under
xorg/driver/xf86-input-mouse.

The pattern of sleep calls is sufficiently systematic to suggest
that they're specifically prescribed by a hardware spec.  Alas,
hardware specs for the PS/2 mouse, MS IntelliMouse, IntelliMouse
Explorer, etc. aren't readily available online to confirm this.  The
best reference I've found is http://www.computer-engineering.org/ps2mouse/ 
.

The Linux USB mouse driver for /dev/input/mice emulates the IntelliMouse
and IntelliMouse Explorer (a.k.a. "ImPS/2" and "ExplorerPS/2" in src/ 
mouse.c)
in software.  AFAICT, the usleep() calls are unneeded for USB mice on
Linux.  (I've tested and confirmed that deleting the calls has no
immediately visible impact on Chromium OS).

The usleep() calls during mouse initialization total up to 230 ms on my
test configuration.  That's big enough to cry out for a fix.  However,
I assume that merely deleting the calls will break a hardware config  
that
somebody, somewhere still cares about.  My first cut a fix that  
preserves
compatibility would be to add a new protocol (e.g. "LinuxUSB") that
tracks either "ImPS/2" or "ExplorerPS/2", but omits unnecessary delays.

Any advice on this?

-- jrb