Another update for all who are interested -I already commented about the USB to PS/2 adapter built on a Raspberry Pi Pico. That works very well.
A few weeks ago I received an AGP display adapter bought from eBay. It is based around the nVidia FX5200 chipset, and has all of VGA, DVI and S-Video outputs. At 256mb, the card has twice as much memory as the base system!
The results are mixed.From the VGA port the card works perfectly. POST messages, BIOS setup screens, FreeDOS command line and a few games like Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem 2 all work.
I tried a DVI to HDMI cable on several monitors. One of them is actually a television with native 720p resolution. On that monitor everything is displayed in a letterbox. The left and right several dozen pixels are not displayed.
The second monitor has a DVI input. Using a DVI to HDMI cable and an HDMI to DVI adapter, there is no display. Using a DVI to DVI cable it works perfectly.
The third monitor is a fairly new Viewsonic. Using DVI to HDMI adapter it produces no display, and the computer gives a beep code at power-up.
Net result - It seems I cannot get there from here. Dang ... =============== Bill Gee On 1/25/24 16:21, Bill Gee via Freedos-user wrote:
Well, you are right - I could switch distributions to something that is avoiding the Wayland juggernaut. But my chosen Koolaid is Fedora, and starting with version 40 in April they plan to ship without an X server. That may not stick, and it may also be a repository package. KDE, though, is also drinking the Wayland Koolaid. Their next version pretty much requires Wayland.Yes, that Asus is an old system. Why do I keep it running?? Because it is what I have! I am not going to go out and buy a system to run FreeDOS. What I have should work. For me FreeDOS is a hobby. There are no production systems on it. A few old games (King's Quest 1, for example) is about it.There were two versions of the P5A-B. I have the version that does not have USB or sound on it."Flexible USB keyboards" won't help in this case because the actual device will be a KVM switch. Indeed, I already use a flexible USB keyboard which, with the simple adapter as in your links below, runs well in my current system.You remind me that there are some Arduino models which have USB. All my projects use Pro-Mini which does not have USB. Yeah, they are cheap - but I already have a Pico. I will give that a go first. If it does not work, then I can look at an Arduino alternative.=============== Bill Gee On 1/25/24 14:06, Eric Auer via Freedos-user wrote: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 supportThat 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 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user_______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
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