I’m this old
Shit. I know what this is. Goddammit.
Sorry bro
DB9 is still used on for MIDI on electronic instruments, though some manufacturers are moving to doing it with a TRS 3.5mm plug since it only uses 3 pins.
I had a mouse that plugged into the serial port, but my first computer was a Commodore 64.
The ol’ RS232?
No, this is the rs232 connector (officially the DB9)
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I got that reference. Fuck, I’m old.
Please explain? I get that the chubby bird is speaking assembly, but I’m sure there’s more to it than that?
PS2 keyboards use interrupts rather than polling in USB, meaning every time a key is pressed the CPU stops what its doing to process it.
Cool! I had no idea it was deeper than just a physical interface change.
And having to pick your IRQ when installing anything into your machine, and the weird bugs that could happen if you mucked it up.
I remember manually programming the cylinders and heads on a hdd into the bios. Kids these days got it easy
Keyboard slows down the CPU because it gets priority over whatever the CPU is working on so the keyboard could cause your system to lag.
Back then all we had was single core CPUs.
Markiplier farquad hybrid deep fried meme
What kind of connector is this? I remember seeing them on 1970s audio equipment, maybe for mic in?
It’s an AT/ XT keyboard connector.
And back then if we did have a mouse, it was square, and used a 9pin serial port
This reminds me when a mouse was an option not a requirement
still is
/i3gang
DEFINITELY optional
go go gadget commandline
My keyboard still uses a PS/2 port via adapter. 1986 Model M, still clicky.
My first PC was a Timex Sinclair 1000 and I wrote a text-based choose your own adventure game in basic for it and saved the program on audio cassette.
(シ_ _)シ
my “first” pc was a pc xt dad had in the basement. actually no because i didnt own it (so technically my first was a 2008 netbook) but i did use it quite some times before mom gave me her old netbook so i still count it
Big keyboard jack, serial for mouse, parallel for printer
Don’t forget the serial input for gamepads and joysticks in the dedicated sound board for some reason
And because the PC only have 1 serial port, you disconnect the printer and use a parallel to serial adapter.
Except that wasn’t a serial port, it was midi, and the reason it was on the sound card was because the input was analog.
Your joystick was just two fancy potentiometers, and your soundcard decoded the voltage on the middle legs into a position.
Soundcards handled joysticks because they had the fastest ADCs.
huh, i thought it was just because “owning a sound card” and “likely to play games” was the biggest overlap of the Venn circles.
Wow, 30 years later and I’m just learning this now. Thank you
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_port
The 15-pin D-sub connector itself was apparently a combination of analog and digital. It had to be, since MIDI is digital (it’s right there in the name: Musical Instrument Digital Interface). TIL it wasn’t all digital.
They didn’t even use an ADC. They used 555 timers to produce a pulse. They measured the length of the pulse to determine the potentiometer position. Since there are 4 analog inputs, they typically used the 558 timer which is the quad version of the 555.
And here I thought I had it all figured out. But it does make sense. Doing it with an analog signal introduces noise and measuring pulse widths is going to be simpler.
Early PC only had 5 card slots, and the only jack on the motherboard was the keyboard. One slot is going to be used by a video card, one’s probably being used by a hard drive controller, one’s probably used by a parallel + serial card. Soundcards also included controller ports to try to save a slot.
I thought sometimes they called them game ports (for the joystick.)
I reasoned if you are installing a sound card, you are probably doing some gaming, so it made sense to sort of bundle those together.
Its on the sound card because it’s a midi port. Its designed for connecting a keyboard (as in electronic piano). Most people used it for gamepads but that’s not what it was there for.
Yes, this is where my PC master gaming started.
“do you know what ps/2 ports are?”
“holy cow, PlayStation 2? you must be AT LEAST 25!”
[dying inside intensifies]
IBM sure made naming pretty confusing aren’t they?
Ps/2 ports predated the PlayStation 2 by years. Sony made naming confusing in this case.
How can ports of a game predate the platform itself? That makes zero sense.
(/s)
i have a gaming pc built this decade that has both of those ports dude
People knew what I meant when I would verbally say PS/2 in conversation, then people started thinking they were USB because that’s what was used in their PlayStation 2
An elegant port for a more civilized time
Nothing civilized about no hot plugging. Had to restart the whole damn computer, if the cable was loose or out at startup.
skill issue
I’m pretty sure it doesn’t hot plug for anyone. Yes, even the very skilled.
I loved the PCs that had Ctrl + up as a shortcut to flip the monitor orientation. I think it was a Dell thing?
My favourite prank was to flip the screen upside down then unplug the keyboard. Good luck saving your work fuck face
Ok Satan
Quote joke referencing Obi Wan Kenobi…
If you only knew the power of the hot plug!
I know hot plug is a path to many abilities some considering to be unnatural!
Hokey connections and ancient peripherals are no match for a good dongle at your side, kid.
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I actually wanted a PS2 port because it works with interrupts rather than polling but they aren’t really included anymore.
I feel like they don’t make boards for people like me who want small boards with a super niche port.
When a MoDT Mini-ITX board comes out with a PS2 port I will buy that instantly
Listen up, computer, I’m typing NOW. Not whenever you get around to polling the USB device. Sheesh.
Can you actually notice the latency?
I only had it briefly a long time ago,
I think certain things can stall the computer from polling, so if you’re computer is super weak or youre doing something super heavy it would suffer
Maybe its a placebo effect but I did notice it handle itself better when running multiple things.
Are these not still in use?
I’ve not built a tower in a few years granted, but the last one I built had PS2 ports. Heck it even had VGA for the onboard graphics.
They are. Lots of motherboards still include these. There are a lot of special PS/2 input devices that are still around in business/industrial settings and gamers sometimes need them for use with flight sticks, steering wheels, mechanical keyboards etc.
Usually it’s a combo port now instead of a separate port for keyboard/mouse.
ive only seen them as separate ports tho even in recent pcs
You guys had keyboards?
In my day, the RJ-11 jack was for connecting the keyboard, not the phone line.
I remember those days.
Okay that’s something I had no idea about hahaha
I feel like a relic…
I used to have disc with kickstart that i needed to use so my computer would boot.
I raise
edit, actually, it might have been on the back…it’s been forever since I touched one
Ooh, I had a serial mouse (9 pin) from Microsoft of all companies, in the 90’s.
Damn good mouse.
My age in fond memories:
I don’t have long for this world…
Me too… my first code was for Commodore PET. Then I got an Amiga. Sad day when Commodore folded.
On the Amiga’s 40th birthday I brought the old Amiga 500 out of storage to the dinner table and we had cake. Just realized I should do the same with the Atari ST, for more cake. I think my family tolerates me because of the cake.
I’ll see your raise, and up it:
Please,
I always see those videos where people give kids a walkman or a rotary phone and ask them to figure out what it is or how it works. I’m imagining some medieval merchant handing me an abacus and laughing because I can’t figure it out.
It’s little endian, so the beads on the far right are used to outnumber the big endian beads at the top on the woke left. After several computations, the middle section is just gone
Tried reading about endianness once. Pretty sure it can’t be dumbed down enough for my brain.
Ouch. I had to learn endianness once to solve a real life serialization bug. It sucked. I learned it for just long enough to correct the code for the corner cases involves, and then slept and forgot everything about it.
You know how some languages write left-to-right, and some rught-to-left? Endianness is that, for numbers.
Or another analogy is dates: 2025/12/31 is big endian, 31/12/2025 is little endian. And 12/31/2025 is middle endian. Which makes no sense at all because the middle is, by definition, not an end.
I stand corrected. No idea what I was reading (several years ago), but whatever it was made it seem way more complicated. Maybe it was just an explanation from somebody who didn’t know.
Young whippersnappers.
You kids don’t know how good you have it!
Fun fact, the Romans would never have labeled their abacuses like this. It would have made calculating very difficult; they effectively worked with modern numbers in bead form, and then used the famous numeral system just to record the results.
My buddy still has one of those in his garage.
I said the real two genders.
There where three. The full din keyboard plug, serial for your mouse and that unholy thing on the back of your sound blaster on which you could connect a joystick.
That’s a midi port
It’s supposed to be, but it’s really just a joystick port.
That’s how most people used it, yeah. But it’s meant to be a midi port which is why it’s on sound cards.
It often worked poorly as such though. While it worked great as a joystick port. I drew my own conclusions.
Tbf most things worked poorly back then. I constantly had to pop my 386 open and jiggle the ram to get it to boot
That’s… not typical though.
