Really ignorant mouse question

[Timothy Murphy]

I have a serial mouse on an old computer.
When I boot the computer the mouse is frozen.
I find I can activate the mouse by going to a text console (Ctrl-Alt-F1),
running system-config-mouse, and returning to graphics mode.
This works fine until I reboot again.

How can I make the activation permanent?
And what exactly does system-config-mouse do
to activate the mouse?

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland