Hi Bill,

group.  The short version:  With the coming of Wayland I have little choice but to get new display adapters for all of my Linux machines.

You probably are not technically forced to use Wayland: Most
distros give you a choice of drivers to pick from, even when
they recommend one specific framework as default.

My FreeDOS system is hosted on an old mainboard - an Asus P5A-B.  This board does not have USB ports and does not have emulation support

That is a Socket 7 board with EDO/SDRAM DIMM, AGP, PCI and ISA.
Are you sure that you need a board THAT old for your DOS tasks?

According to https://www.anandtech.com/show/116 P5A-B should have
two USB ports. Maybe you just need a slot bracket to access them.
If that fails, you can still use a PCI USB adapter card. I agree
Bad or missing USB legacy support in the BIOS may be an issue, but:

I could install a board with USB ports, but that does not help FreeDOS.

Without BIOS support, try DOS USB drivers. I guess it would be
acceptable to have to connect a PS/2 keyboard directly, without a
KVM switch, for BIOS setup purposes once, as long as DOS can use
the USB keyboard properly after booting with USB drivers loaded.

The Raspberry Pi Pico is not a full-on Pi.  It is a microcontroller much like an Arduino, though with quite a bit more processing power.

Good to know. I checked what "USB PS/2 Arduino" brings up, so
in case somebody else is curious about alternatives:

 - Stackexchange says flexible USB keyboards can do PS/2 data and
   clock on USB D- and D+ respectively, and of course +5V and GND,
   so that is the wiring which your USB KVM switch MIGHT support:

https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/54853/how-to-convert-usb-to-ps-2

https://i.stack.imgur.com/tXhcw.jpg

 - Instructables has an Arduino PS/2 to USB adapter project, but
   that is for connecting PS/2 keyboards to modern computers.

 - There are Arduino libraries to use PS/2 keyboard or mouse, so
   that again is easier than the other way round, simulating them.

 - Arduinos default to showing up as serial port devices when you
   plug them via USB, but there are versatile libraries like V-USB:

https://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/index.html

My quick search did not bring up a ready-made solution for what
you were looking for, I just THINK it should be possible with
much less computing power even than an Arduino style RPi Pico.

At $4 a Pico is also cheaper than most Arduinos.

 :-o

Regards, Eric



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