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1. Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 06:46:11 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

   Given that PS/2 keyboard/mice are electrically compatible and just use a different protocol, imagine how much better the PC could have been for the entire 90s if they'd just bothered to write some code to make PS/2 port firmware autodetect which one they're talking to. You could have just had PS/2 ports, no need for keyboard + mouse

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 06:47:16 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     make it extensible (keyboards are protocol 0, mice are protocol 1, let microsoft define support for later protocols and TSRs can act as device drivers) and allow for PS/2 hubs and WHOOPS WE INVENTED ADB AGAIN

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 06:47:59 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     would USB have caught on if the PC already had its own shitty slow USB?

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 06:48:48 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     the keyboard protocol is SO slow. You have no idea. Try making a keyboard that types in the entirety of The Bee Movie script, and you'll quickly realize how slow PC keyboards are. Even in the US era they can't type all that fast.

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 06:51:08 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     I wonder if the original PC/XT protocol is faster, technically?
     That one is a weird thing where it's not really a protocol, it's more like an overgrown shift buffer. If you built a really fast XT, it could shift keys out of an attached keyboard quite fast

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 06:52:41 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     PC/XT is unidirectional and it's very, very simple.
     AT introduced a two-way protocol for Reasons, but this meant there's back and forth and baud rates and such.
     PS/2 is just AT in a different connector, and USB's HID was designed to be similar to PS/2 for backwards compatibility reasons. (Bluetooth keyboards are the same)

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 06:53:21 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     it's 2024, your wireless RGB mechanical gaming keyboard is using a protocol from 1984 through 3-4 wrappers

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 06:54:20 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     Anyway the main reason I was thinking about this is because PS/2-as-ADB would let you do something that was impossible until USB, without majorly cheating:
     DUAL KEYBOARD MODE

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 06:54:49 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     you couldn't have a joystick that acted as a keyboard, or a mouse with a side button that presses alt-f2 for you (as you can today)

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 06:55:27 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     because the AT & PS/2 motherboards only have one Keyboard Hole

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 06:56:11 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     but obviously people wanted dual keyboards for assorted reasons, and the way you do it is you design a keyboard that lets you plug another keyboard into it, and it has to have a microcontroller merging the two keyboard's keypresses

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:09:05 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     you usually saw this with barcode scanners: they'd have a "keyboard wedge", which is a device you plug your keyboard into, your barcode scanner into, and then you plug that into the computer. As far as the computer knows, it has one keyboard, and it's the wedge

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:09:42 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     this complexity meant you couldn't "just" be a keyboard.
     Your mouse can't just be a keyboard, your joystick can't just be a keyboard, you can't just plug in two keyboards (hell, you can't actually hotswap them, PS/2 is not safe to hotswap!)

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:10:12 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     this was trivially fixable but no on did because they were all just compatible with IBM/each other

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:10:59 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • shrekonsec

     @shrekonsec Yeah. Laptops often did that, because they only had room for one PS/2 port. You could also get a Y-splitter and do both

   • shrekonsec (shrekonsec@ioc.exchange)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:11:00 JST shrekonsec

     in reply to

     @foone Weren't there some laptops that shipped with a combi keyboard/mouse PS/2 plug? Or maybe I misremember.

   • Rue Mohr (ruenahcmohr@infosec.exchange)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:12:09 JST Rue Mohr

     in reply to

     @foone someone tested it on youtube, PS2 keybaords have less latency than usb.

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:12:09 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Rue Mohr

     @RueNahcMohr that makes sense. For historical reasons, PS/2 is wired to an IRQ line, so the instant you push a key your CPU stops doing whatever and starts serving the keypress

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:17:11 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Cavyherd

     @cavyherd it's bad. it's a rabbit hole I've avoided going into because I know it'll swallow me whole

   • Cavyherd (cavyherd@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:17:12 JST Cavyherd

     in reply to

     @foone

     I've gotten so frustrated. It seems to me that systems are, if anything, *slowing down* in the "modern" age. Even if your keyboard is responsive, it takes an extra beat for keystrokes to register. HOW is this an improvement!?

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:17:39 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Will Dormann

     @wdormann if people were hotplugging it all the time, motherboards would start incorporating protection, I hope. I really hope.

   • Will Dormann (wdormann@infosec.exchange)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:17:40 JST Will Dormann

     in reply to

     @foone
     Ah, but can you hot-plug this shitty slow USB in an electrically sound manner? 🤔

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:33:51 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • alxhu (Leafy) 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

     @alxhu I've read that before. I wonder what this company did when USB came along?
     did they mark one USB port as Keyboard, and one as Mouse?

   • alxhu (Leafy) 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ (alxhu@greifswald.lgbt)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:33:52 JST alxhu (Leafy) 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     @foone

     I'd like to share this story with you

     https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20210216-00/?p=104869

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 08:39:39 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Pyxaron

     @Pyxaron yeah, same. I hotswapped them all the time.
     You can get lucky, and some motherboards were better made and wouldn't have a problem, but you can TOTALLY fry systems doing this

   • Pyxaron (pyxaron@dragonchat.org)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 08:39:40 JST Pyxaron

     in reply to

     @foone Only now, after years of hotswapping PS/2 keyboards and mices without issue, i learn that they're not meant to be hotswapped.