New Pc's And Ps/2 Port.

[PlayStation 10]

Noticed recently that a lot of the latest desktop machines are coming with the old skool PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports. More so on gaming pc's.

 

My brother recently bought a very expensive pre-built gaming pc and that has a PS/2 port on aswell.

 

What's it all about? Why is such an old bit of hardware coming back into modern desktops?

[zach 233]

It covers them for a larger customer base.

 

I find them pointless, but I'm sure there are people that still use the port due to latency being lower than USB. Gamers being a main customer?

[tzijlstra 11]

It's to do with the trend of mechanical keyboards. Some people out there spend hundreds of pounds on a mechanical keyboard and recently some classics have become increasingly popular for their quality build. Some of the vintage IBM and Apple ones go for absolutely silly money. If I think back to how many of those I chucked over time... Also, the ports are dirt-cheap to implement and it is a tried and tested port that is perfectly capable of excellent response for keyboards (I don't know how well a fast laser gaming mouse would do...)

 

 

[PlayStation 10]

You're not kidding about price of old keyboards. Saw a Commodore CDTV keyboard go for £240. Everything over 20yrs old is sky rocketing in price now.

[swarfendor437 14]

Another issue might be that, as in my circumstance when I purchased an Asus Prime X470-PRO motherboard it would not accept a USB keyboard when trying to install Windows 7 64-bit Pro - they only produced Windows 10 drivers for it. So the old trusty Cherry keyboard with PS/2 connection came in very handy whilst installing the OS! 😉

Edited April 14, 2021 by swarfendor437
typo

[Ghozer 112]

17 hours ago, swarfendor437 said:

Another issue might be that, as in my circumstance when I purchased an Asus Prime X470-PRO motherboard it would not accept a USB keyboard when trying to install Windows 7 64-bit Pro - they only produced Windows 10 drivers for it. So the old trusty Cherry keyboard with PS/2 connection came in very handy whilst installing the OS! 😉

Odd, as W7 drivers work perfectly fine on W10... and i'm using an Asus Prime and never had issues myself

[swarfendor437 14]

When I was installing it Microsoft popped up and said the hardware you are using was built for  anewer OS and suggested I swapped to Windows 10 - no thanks! 😉

Don't remember having issues when it came to installing GNU/Linux on a different Hard Drive in the system.

[Ghozer 112]

10 minutes ago, swarfendor437 said:

When I was installing it Microsoft popped up and said the hardware you are using was built for  anewer OS and suggested I swapped to Windows 10 - no thanks! 😉

Don't remember having issues when it came to installing GNU/Linux on a different Hard Drive in the system.

Honestly, windows 10 has more support for older stuff than 7 ever did, and is 10x more stable...

I really don't know what you have against it... it's superior to 7 in every way tbh!

[Guest]

9 hours ago, Ghozer said:

Honestly, windows 10 has more support for older stuff than 7 ever did, and is 10x more stable...

I really don't know what you have against it... it's superior to 7 in every way tbh!

This. 

 

Plus 7 has no security updates anymore so why use it anyway? And a USB keyboard not working at boot/install time would imply a different fault, either the keyboard or the mobo.

[alchresearch 208]

14 hours ago, Ghozer said:

I really don't know what you have against it... it's superior to 7 in every way tbh!

Except for the start menu.

 

The constant patches which break things.  And the patch for the patch which causes even more issues.

[Ghozer 112]

59 minutes ago, alchresearch said:

Except for the start menu.

 

The constant patches which break things.  And the patch for the patch which causes even more issues.

Not had a single patch break anything...
What do you mean "Except for the start menu" it's cleaner and simpler, can still do everything from there

[Guest]

The only patches I've had which break things are because I'm on the fast ring for updates.

 

I don't really know what is wrong with the start menu either?

 

It seems to be Windows OSes are the same as everything else here on the forum, old things viewed through rose tinted spectacles. Every OS has had it's problems.