Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
I have a computer with a motherboard which only has a single PS/2 port on it. It's kind of annoying when you want to use DOS or something else old with no USB support, and want both a keyboard and mouse present.
I see they sell these PS/2 Y Cables (splitters) which allow two PS/2 devices share a single port. But I see lots of people who order these online complain in customer feedback that its incompatible with their motherboard.
Is there any way to know in advance if the motherboard will support one of these? Are these more compact designs just lazy, and the motherboard itself really supports another PS/2 jack connector, if they were both soldered on properly?
Anyone have wisdom on this matter? Thanks.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Sorry, no wisdom, but I'm thinking that motherboards (at least if you buy them yourself rather than bying a pre-assembled PC) often come with additional optional parts (such as game/joystick ports, etc). I suppose you have checked that yours didn't come with such a splitter already.
y-cables are nonstandard, if your motherboard supports them you could expect
a) that the feature is documented / advertised
b) that a suitable y-cable is either included or available directly from the mobo-vendor, because they aren't standardized either.
You could check whether Pin 6 carries any voltage (if you have the equipment). Otherwise you just may have to buy the cable and try.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Tub wrote:
y-cables are nonstandard, if your motherboard supports them you could expect
a) that the feature is documented / advertised
b) that a suitable y-cable is either included or available directly from the mobo-vendor, because they aren't standardized either.
Interesting, I heard opposing opinions elsewhere. Is there any truth to mice and keyboards being wired differently?
The motherboard documents that it works for both mouse and keyboard, but doesn't specify if whether that's at the same time or not.
DarkKobold wrote:
I own an old MS Home Mouse with a serial connector.
DarkKobold wrote:
If the computer is as old as I'm assuming, then it probably has a serial port on it.
The motherboard is about 1.5 years old, not sure why you're assuming anything here. There is no serial port.
DarkKobold wrote:
Man, this brings back memories of playing inside AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, trying to get things to work.
FILES = 40!!!!
Still no idea what that meant.
How many files should you be allowed to open at once under various conditions.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Since then, I've swapped them on at least a dozen machines, as well as hot swapped mice without any issues at all. I don't know what to believe...
AFAIK the technical specification of the PS/2 port doesn't require support for hot-swapping, and I assume that the oldest and cheapest motherboards had no safety measures against it, so you could potentially damage the circuit, and even in the best cases the system would not detect the swapping. Better motherboards probably have safety measures to avoid this, even if the standard doesn't require it.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Warp wrote:
Nach wrote:
Since then, I've swapped them on at least a dozen machines, as well as hot swapped mice without any issues at all. I don't know what to believe...
AFAIK the technical specification of the PS/2 port doesn't require support for hot-swapping, and I assume that the oldest and cheapest motherboards had no safety measures against it, so you could potentially damage the circuit, and even in the best cases the system would not detect the swapping. Better motherboards probably have safety measures to avoid this, even if the standard doesn't require it.
And every motherboard I worked with which came out in the past decade or so seems to be the latter kind...
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
IIRC the two external PS/2 ports go to the same part of the motherboard internally; for this reason, sometimes apparent errors with the mouse are actually errors with the keyboard and vice-versa.
The motherboard is about 1.5 years old, not sure why you're assuming anything here. There is no serial port.
I guess I figured PS2 port + dos = old. Hence why I called it an assumption.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
DarkKobold wrote:
Nach wrote:
The motherboard is about 1.5 years old, not sure why you're assuming anything here. There is no serial port.
I guess I figured PS2 port + dos = old. Hence why I called it an assumption.
Having just a single PS/2 port on a machine (outside of laptops, and given there are PS/2 ports at all) is a rather recent phenomenon. I think it started ~2-3 ago.
Interestingly enough though, I found that my motherboard has a header for a serial port...
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
