Conversation

Notices

1. Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 00:58:07 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

   It's been 36 years but I'm still mad at IBM for using identical connectors for the keyboard and mouse on the ps/2.
   Come on. Not even a key pin? Or just make them interchangeable, it wouldn't take much more circuitry!

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 01:20:04 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • jornucopia

     @jordan the connector has shared power pins but the keyboard data and mouse data are on different pins. So the connectors could be interchangeable, they just weren't usually

   • jornucopia (jordan@sometimes.social)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 01:20:05 JST jornucopia

     in reply to

     @foone What's up with the machines that have a port that's both colors? What's up with the machines that use Y cables for keyboard and mouse? I never understood how they seemed to be interchangable (and could even one port with both wired into it?) in some contexts but not others.

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 01:41:36 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     They at least set it up so that the keyboard/mouse pins are different, making it technically possible to have universal ports and Y-splitter single ports, as well as making sure it doesn't explode if you plug in the wrong device.

     But still. Terrible design. Different devices should either connect to universal ports where it doesn't matter, or not be possible to get wrong.

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 04:43:17 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     wait no they didn't I got it completely wrong. So they'd just need to make the code smart enough to swap purposes.
     That probably didn't (universally, I know there are exceptions) because for Historical Reasons the Mouse Controller and Keyboard Controller are different chips

   • Andreas Bombe (andreasbombe@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 04:44:38 JST Andreas Bombe

     in reply to

     @foone The keyboard and mouse pins aren't different though? They just have different commands and data. Universal ports just detect what kind of device is connected and switch modes accordingly.

     Only the nonstandard dual ports repurpose the unused pins to make a splitter cable possible.

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 04:44:38 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Andreas Bombe

     @andreasbombe you're right, I misremembered and didn't look it up. Whoops! thanks

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 04:46:11 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • farhaven 🇪🇺

     @farhaven They're not guaranteed to be interchangable, no. But plenty of newer equipment makes them interchangable just because it's not that hard to do in software.

   • farhaven 🇪🇺 (farhaven@mastodon.cloud)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 04:46:12 JST farhaven 🇪🇺

     in reply to

     @foone Wait, they're not interchangible? Am I doing something verboten by connecting my keyboard to the mouse part of a PS2 <-> USB adapter because the keyboard part is on vacation?

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 05:38:27 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Not Quite Almost Xmas Lion

     @LionsPhil The C64 worked similarly: the joystick and keyboard and mouse were all wired together, so if you moved the joystick or mouse while the program was expecting keyboard input, it TYPED. (that's actually where my name comes from)

   • Not Quite Almost Xmas Lion (lionsphil@plush.city)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 05:38:28 JST Not Quite Almost Xmas Lion

     in reply to

     @foone at least it's not as cursed as the Atari ST, where the mouse port and the second joystick port were the same, and you could get some bizzare inputs when software was expecting one but you had the other connected

     also it had a mouse-driven GUI and two-player joystick games...and the ports were on the underside of the machine

     the ST was perhaps not without its bafflingly bad design decisions