Dual mice, keyboard

[amoebadrew]

is it possible to have two mice at once? you know two pointers? is there a driver? same question with keyboards. It would be very cool

 

[Qumahlin]

Well on my friends computer he can plug in a ps/2 mouse and a usb mouse and they both load fine.. but I've never tested it on mine due to the fact that I find it idiotic to have a usb mouse or keyboard since ps/2 is of = performance and all your doing is wasting 2 usb ports that could be better used

 

[Gnu]

You can't have two pointers at once in the GUI (at least not natively), but two mice can control the same pointer, just as two keyboards will control the same input. It does work, but not quite how you're looking for.

However, I do believe that with a certain few extra-smart mappable DirectInput applications, you CAN use them as independant devices in those apps.

Oh, and Qumahlin ... it does depend on the device (and your USB bandwidth load), but you can get MUCH higher resolution out of a USB mouse than with PS/2, so I wouldn't exactly call USB a waste in that particular circumstance. It may be said that it's a slight overkill in keyboards, although USB keyboards are a bit more hot-swappable (some spaz out when removed under PS/2), and HID-friendly keyboards work a bit better out-of-the-box under USB. Also, many USB keyboards offer built-in low-power USB ports, so blowing a port becomes less of an issue. Besides, as parallel and serial ports become increasingly obsolete (they pretty much are now anyway) and USB hubs become cheaper, I see little reason NOT to buy a USB device these days.

 

[Qumahlin]

The resolution of the mouse depends upon the mouse itself, not the port it is connected to. a mouse does not use nearly enough bandwidth to stress a ps/2 port or warrant a USB port. you can change the fields per a sec the mouse updates if ya want under properties and they are both the same max values for usb and ps/2.

And as it goes USB will be obsolete soon, USB 2.0 has come way to late to save USB, too many devices are gonna start using firewire it seems...but who knows..maybe ps/2 will be obsolete and replaced with usb for mouse and keyboards, then actualy bandwidth needing devices will use firewire

 

[Gnu]

As I said, it depends on the device -- however, there are MANY pointing devices that exceed PS/2's default Windows sample rate (which is 60Hz under NT, 40Hz under 9x). You CAN tweak it higher, but then you start to lose latency. You can't compare bandwidth between serial devices and USB, it's just not the same.

Decreeing USB obsolescence is a bit far-fetched. Although I do agree that USB2 has probably come a bit too late to outpace 1394, USB is too well rooted in the mainstream to be called obsolete anytime soon. Firewire is still too expensive for all but the most bandwidth-hungry hardware (mostly A/V), and it doesn't run well over distances.

I will say this, though ... if they don't do something spectacular to extend the IDE architecture soon, I suspect that some flavour of 1394 derivative will pretty much control most internal device communication at some point.