On Sun, Nov 01, 2020 at 01:12:30PM -0800, obs...@loopw.com wrote: > note that ps/2 is not actually designed for hotplug (I fried a > keyboard controller to bring you this knowledge)
Thanks. I kind of know about ps/2. Albeit it happened once or twice that I hotplugged ps/2 keyboard. I later vowed to avoid it. Right now it is unplugged - my old ps/2 kbs are running issues and I am not very happy about it. I notice some lagging with my current usb kb, which is the cheapest mech [1] I was able to find, so maybe this is because of the "cheap". Or, the usb part of system (still Linux) is not so fast. If gaming guys can give some clues, they seem to prefer ps/2 kbds, which probably means the lag of usb is too big to suffer. I would be happy to connect my kbd into ps/2 port one day, but a quick test (usb kbd -> usb-to-ps2 converter -> ps2-to-usb converter -> usb plughole) showed me that this one kbd cannot speak ps/2 protocol. I also tested same procedure on rubber dome usb kbd from same maker and this one connected without problem. So, now I have a problem. I would like to keep plugging my new keyboards into ps/2 hole. I really would. But for plugging the mech which I have now, I would need some special kind of usb-to-ps/2 converter. The dumb one does not work and I could not find anything better. It is obvious I will be able to buy "some" ps/2 kbd for a while. But they will be of deteriorating quality, post-office after-use sell-outs. I will probably eke out for better mech, which will last me good ten years. But, stuff breaks. And in the future there might be usb-only kbds which will not understand how to talk "ps/2-ish". So, obviously, to connect such keyboard into ps/2 hole, one would need a translator. So far, the only DIY thing I _maybe_ could pull out is RPi - it would take usb kbd into its usb port and translate characters (by C program) into five gpio ports connected to ps/2 male plug. However, using whole big RPi sounds a bit like overkill. And I am yet to learn the stuff. So, is there something I could hunt down, some kind of smarter usb-to-ps/2 converter? For now, I am just curious and try to be proactive with my hardware choices. But I will gladly learn if anybody has a clue or hint for me (oh, not just for me, there are going to be many more people like me, they just do not know yet). [1] If anybody is curious, it was supposed to be my inroad into the land of mechs. On the plus side, I love "ten key less" layout. I want more of this. On the 50-50 side, it has Outemu Blue switches. They work, but sometimes I have to press the key more than once (after about year of not very heavy typing). I have it plugged into usb hub with micro on-off switches for individual devices, so when I get annoyed, I "hard reset" the keyboard and after that it somehow comes back to the order. There is nothing on minus side yet. I expected it would not be perfect for this price but it is better than I expected. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
