I found a solution that appears to work in this Mint Forum post
$ xinput ⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)] ⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)] ⎜ ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint id=13 [slave pointer (2)] ⎜ ↳ Logitech USB Optical Mouse id=11 [slave pointer (2)] ⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)] ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=12 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳
A couple of weeks ago I was at Edinburgh Hacklab and wanted to test a USB to Serial converter. I plugged the USB side of the converter into into my netbook and then went about trying to find a suitable Null Modem cable to make a connection to a RS-232 port of the hacklab PC.