Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 PS2? 1

[moveit]

I wonder if anyone knows if it is true that Microsoft are going to release a version of the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 so it will work with PS2?
I live in the UK and have been told that there is a strong rumour one is being made to run both USB/PS2 sometime this year.

 

[felixc]

Since years and years Microsoft dreams of getting rid of the PS/2 connectors which force the motherboards to keep on having legacy controllers dating from the original PC/AT era (1984). If they ever do it, you are lucky. It would be because there's been a very strong pressure from their customer base.
PCs without PS/2 connectors have arrived to the market. It is likely that the majority of them will abandon these connectors in the near future. Why? Among other things it will free two interrupt lines.
So along this idea, the peripherals will slowly stop to support both PS/2 and USB from the same connector, to reduce the costs of the peripherals.

 

[moveit]

Hi felixc

Both myself and some friends have had much trouble with the USB slots and find the PS2 to be more stable. At the beginning of last year I got a KVM to run 2 computers and that was USB. It never worked properly and caused much hair pulling. I tried a replacement of one manufacturer but that failed. I even tried a different make and tried 2 of their models and that failed. I got hold of a PS2 connection and have not had any problems since.
I think USB is good for many things but as far as keyboards are concerned it just does not work when using KVMs. I wonder why the manufacturers have not gone down the Firewire path? That seems to be stable. Thanks for your comment.

 

[felixc]

The interface from a PS/2 keyboard to the CPU is quite direct, requires almost no software, and is well documented. Its hardware implementation made it easy to fool, as it happens when a KVM switch is used. It was just perfect at the time it was designed. These were the MS-DOS days. Don't think of multi-task on a PC, or internet security, in 1984. They were already a good evolution from the serial mice.
Its almost direct-to-CPU connection became a liability in a context of modern operating systems, which have to control every I/O to ensure security and stability.
One of the USB goals was to allow the replacement of all the peripheral ports that were connected through the original ISA-bus of the PC. The USB interface hardware is cheaper and offers a better speed than the PS/2 Mini-DIN. The USB hardware also contains circuitry to detect the presence of the peripherals, to detect overloads. And atop of that is a complex software stack and protocol that is handled by the host computer. Fooling a USB port with a KVM switch is a much tougher challenge than a PS/2 port.
The Firewire port has some definite hardware advantages over USB, but it was not designed from the start as a general purpose serial expansion bus. It was first intended as a digital link between video equipment. It did not all that was needed to integrate easily into a complete computer environment. Another reason why Firewire did not take the market is that it was, in the computer world, endorsed by Apple. Behind the USB effort was Microsoft at the main seat. That explains several things.
With Microsoft behind USB, they may be among the first to eliminate PS/2 versions of their mouse and keyboards to set the example.
KVM switches will improve in the future, they have no choice. But meanwhile, is Microsoft the only one to have a keyboard layout like the natural ergonomic?

 

[wahnula]

Its hardware implementation made it easy to fool, as it happens when a KVM switch is used

felixc,

Could you elaborate on why a KVM needs to "fool" a PC? It seems to me to be a simple switch, connecting this set of controls to that PC or that other PC. Of course I am usually wrong in these things, just curious.

Brilliant summation overall, very educational, thanks.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[ArizonaGeek]

There are USB only KVM switches out now, I've had one for a couple of years. My only complaint about it was that it was USB 1.0 and not 2.0 but, as I said, it is a couple of years old so a newer version might be 2.0. They are out there though.

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[felixc]

A rotary switch could probably do the trick of switching the keyboards between PCs, except maybe when they power up, as some commands can be sent to the keyboard (like self test). Some BIOSes may not like to boot without a keyboard. The KVM switch will respond "present" at each port. This is relatively easy. But not so with a USB one.

Yup, the USB KVM switches are out there. I would not buy one without reading from someone who validated it thoroughly.