5 Nov
2011
5 Nov
'11
1:51 p.m.
On Sat, 5 Nov 2011, David Riley wrote:
On Nov 5, 2011, at 4:27 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
clickykeyboards.com sells ps2-to-usb converters known to be true
converters and not stupid passive things.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
If you have a PS/2-interface keyboard that you
really like, spend
some money on a real PS/2-to-USB *converter*, not just a connector
adapter (which most cheap ones are).
The pckeyboard site has some suggestions. There's really no reason
that a real adapter can't be every bit as good as a native USB
keyboard.
Most of the "connector adaptors" just wire the USB port up in a funny
way so that the controller on the keyboard knows it's supposed to act as
a PS/2 keyboard instead. Those cheap purple adaptors that come with a
lot of keyboards won't work with a number of newer USB-only keyboards
whose microcontrollers don't have that functionality built in.
It's interesting, though; a lot of the "better" keyboards that offer
both USB and PS/2 (I'm mostly thinking of Das Keyboard here) support
full n-key rollover on PS/2 and up to 6-key rollover on USB. I'm not
quite sure the reason for that; both PS/2 and the USB HID keyboard
descriptors use key-up/key-down messages instead of just indicating the
active keys. I blame crappy programmers.