As John Wittkoski suggested, I installed HWDIRECT#394 and booted without
any problems. Thanks a million. Now something else surfaced: the 2nd and
3rd buttons send Left and Right arrows instead of Pointer2 and 3
respectively. I tried xmodmap -e "pointer = default", but it didn't make
any difference. I sort of understand how to remap keyboard keys, they have
hex or octal values, but what about this mixed case? I need to replace a
keyboard value with a pointer one.

Does anybody know?

Thanks.

Yuri Oskotsky

P.S. Or, maybe, it can only work as a single button device? Then it defies
its purpose and I need to get a truly working 3 button mouse...