ps/2 mouse not detected if ball not rolling?

[Christopher Mosley <cmosley@voicenet.com>]

When starting linux if I do not roll mouse ball  I do
not get a ps2 aux device. Then xwindows will crash when it
does not detect mouse - crash can be prevented by
rolling mouse ball when running startx . But alas  mouse eventually
freezes in xwindows.  This is a hardware problem - the mouse
was working fine.

Any reason to believe the problem is the mouse   
or is there a reason to believe the problem is the ps2 hardware?
Don't have adapter or another ps/2  mouse right now to test this.

                                                     Thanks