[62449] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Worst design decisions?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Todd Vierling)
Thu Sep 18 11:12:09 2003
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 11:07:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org>
To: up@3.am
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.44.0309181054090.74715-100000@richard2.pil.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 up@3.am wrote:
: Without a question: PS/2 style keyboard and mouse connectors. Impossible
: to tell from each other,
And this part is somewhat funny, too, because the PS/2 connector layout is
capable of having both devices share the same bus (there's two unconnected
pins, which some laptops use to provide alternate CLK/DATA signals).
If PS/2 mice used the unconnected pins rather than the same CLK/DATA pins as
the keyboard, all machines could simply have two connectors using all six
pins and you'd be able to plug either device into either socket.
A real "bus" would have been better yet, but we're talking about a spec that
came from a company bent on continuing to use simple TTL-based clocked
communications with collision detection only available by extra bus lines
(read: "bus and tag" 8-).
--
-- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com>
