DOS ain't dead

RS232 to keyboard / interesting keyboard hardware interfaces (Announce)

posted by Arjay, 10.08.2010, 21:39

> Okay, but you need special hardware (e.g. a converter) for that, to connect
> two keyboards to the same PS/2 keyboard port.
Well although I've never tried I would imagine possibly not. e.g. if you have a PC with USB and a PS/2 then I would imagine you could use the BIOS to do the legacy USB stuff and talk to the PS/2 keyboard processor directly.
Someone else with better knowledge of this area care to comment? Possible?

Slightly off topic it is also worth noting the existance of USB debug ports, e.g. with a Net20DC USB 2.0 Debug Cable.

> (Also, this will just "merge"
> the input of all keyboards.)
I would imagine there is a way around this under DOS.


> Yes. With Bret's USB keyboard driver all the keyboard input will be
> "merged",
Ok, that's with his driver. But it doesn't mean things have to be that way.

> Windows' drivers probably "merge" two, but I don't remember whether I
> actually tried that.
Depends on the driver.

> Ah, so this trick was made an ad-hoc interface by people
Correct :)

> You would then have the option to run the modified program either with the
> one input method or the other, and switch between the two, right?
Well in the case of megapage and other doors that I wrote (for my own BBS only) I simply just kept polling in a loop to switch between the 2 users ;)

Obviously this all depends on what you are doing. On a related theme I did write a background BBS door as a TSR which basically answered the phone informed the caller I was busy doing something else and hung up. Meanwhile I was happily still using the PC for whatever I was doing. I'm not sure if I included user input (I think I did but it was flaky).

Separately to this discussion I have considered multiple input/output built into a rewritten non-experimental RJDOS (my shell) but to be honest it is not exactly high on my list at the moment (unless I need it for a project).

Complete thread:

• CuteMouse v2.1b4 - some fixes - Japheth, 09.08.2010, 07:18
  • CuteMouse v2.1b4 - some fixes - swf, 09.08.2010, 17:33
    • CuteMouse v2.1b4 - some fixes - Japheth, 10.08.2010, 06:54
    • CuteMouse v2.1b4 - support for 2 mice? OptiMAME/OptiMouse - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 09:34
      • CuteMouse v2.1b4 - support for 2 mice? OptiMAME/OptiMouse - bretjohn, 10.08.2010, 18:35
        • CuteMouse v2.1b4 - support for 2 mice? OptiMAME/OptiMouse - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 18:53
          • support for 2 mice? - ecm, 10.08.2010, 19:04
            • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 19:32
              • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - ecm, 10.08.2010, 19:38
                • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 19:53
                  • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - bretjohn, 10.08.2010, 20:20
                    • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - ecm, 10.08.2010, 20:35
                      • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 20:57
                        • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - ecm, 10.08.2010, 21:04
                      • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - bretjohn, 10.08.2010, 21:07
                        • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - ecm, 10.08.2010, 21:15
                    • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 20:48
                      • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - ecm, 10.08.2010, 20:51
                  • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - ecm, 10.08.2010, 20:30
              • support for 2 mice? 3 mice etc. CPNMOUSE for Windows - marcov, 11.08.2010, 15:48
            • RS232 to keyboard / interesting keyboard hardware interfaces - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 20:10
              • RS232 to keyboard / interesting keyboard hardware interfaces - ecm, 10.08.2010, 20:38
                • RS232 to keyboard / interesting keyboard hardware interfaces - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 20:51
                  • RS232 to keyboard / interesting keyboard hardware interfaces - ecm, 10.08.2010, 20:57
                    • RS232 to keyboard / interesting keyboard hardware interfaces - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 21:11
                      • RS232 to keyboard / interesting keyboard hardware interfaces - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 21:20
                      • RS232 to keyboard / interesting keyboard hardware interfaces - ecm, 10.08.2010, 21:22
                        • RS232 to keyboard / interesting keyboard hardware interfaces - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 21:39
                          • RS232 to keyboard / interesting keyboard hardware interfaces - ecm, 10.08.2010, 21:53
                            • RS232 to keyboard / interesting keyboard hardware interfaces - bretjohn, 10.08.2010, 22:35
                          • RS232 to keyboard / interesting keyboard hardware interfaces - bretjohn, 10.08.2010, 22:08
          • Free util that supports dual Monitors under MS-DOS/FREEDOS - Arjay, 16.08.2010, 13:23
            • dual PS2 keyboards (shared output) under MS-DOS/FREEDOS - Arjay, 16.08.2010, 14:19
    • CuteMouse v2.1b4 - some fixes - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 11:08
  • CuteMouse v2.1b4 - an interesting idea from Vintage Computer - Arjay, 10.08.2010, 13:13