PS/2 to USB Adapter...HOT!!

[Doomer]

I just DL'ed Mouse Rate Checker and it's varying between 115hz and 1650hz.

The mouse is a Logitech MX 700.

 

[c627627]

Missing pieces of info that would make your post helpful: PS/2 or USB, OS, average Hz.

Lowest and highest Hz number is irrelevant, it's the average that counts.
The average is around 120 Hz, reset the prog and you'll see.

 

[mizzouXC]

this adapter comes free with most usb mice.... what a steal..

 

[Pothead]

Originally posted by: mizzouXC
this adapter comes free with most usb mice.... what a steal..

Did you not read wallsfd949's post? :disgust:

 

[TekDemon]

Originally posted by: c627627
Do not use USB mouse without a PS/2 adaptor and avoid USB keyboards.

They do not work in DOS, BIOS.

USB signals can be processor intensive so the system will run faster if PS/2 port is used.

Actually guys, at the same sampling rate, a USB mouse(or keyboard really) is MUCH more CPU efficient than a PS/2 mouse...

The effort needed by the system to constantly poll the PS/2 port actually used quite a bit of CPU...

If you don't believe me, run the same mouse at the same polling rate on PS/2 and USB and look at your CPU charts when you're moving the mouse around. There should be a BIG difference if you have a slower PC(I suppose it'd be hard to tell if you had some 3.6Ghz overclocked P4 or something)
Scrolling around in explorer uses up to 7%(it fluxes but 7's the highest) of my CPU to do the mouse stuff...but that includes a lot of drawing, etc.

In IE it seems to use more, probably because I'm typing this right now and it's probably trying to figure out if I'm switching windows, or about to click something, whatever(I say this because iexplorer.exe was the one with rising CPU usage during this).

But if you aren't moving your USB mouse around it drops quickly to 0%. I think a PS/2 mouse would keep using CPU regardless since it has to keep polling the port.

 

[Keltron]

total comes out $13.59 after shipping. I can pickup a usb keyboard at local store for $10. and the same converter is sold at Big Lots for $10. I dont think this is a hot deal

 

[Flair]

This is a good deal because many new notebooks are taking off PS/2 ports...... really sucks for OS's that don't support USB.....

yes there are still companies standardized on NT!!

 

[jrichrds]

I agree with TekDemon that USB is far more efficient at handling a mouse than legacy PS/2 at the same refresh rate.

And here's what Peter has to say concerning PS/2 refresh rates:

No matter how often that myth is repeated - the adjustable rate on PS/2 is NOT an advantage, but merely a kludge to let the user balance between smooth mouse movement with high system load and jerky pointer motion at low system load. Note that fast CPUs don't help, since the access times toward this historically ancient piece of silicon that is the keyboard/mouse controller (we're talking 1977, 8-bit ISA here!) are astronomical.

On USB, which is a bus mastering PCI device, smooth pointer movement and low system load aren't contradictory goals, so there simply is no NEED to make anything adjustable.

USB. Twenty years of progress over PS/2.

 

[marvdmartian]

This one I found at cablewholesale isn't a snazzy 2 to 1 adaptor, but good if someone just needs one ps/2 to usb adaptor:

ps/2 to usb adaptor

Look for item #30U2-06200, the USB A Male to MiniDin6 (PS/2) Female Adaptor, for $1.70 + shipping. They also have it in the usb a female to ps/2 male adaptor, right below this one.

With a lifetime reseller rating of 7.08, it looks like they'd be a good place to buy from too!!

 

[qjj]

This is USB to PS/2 and NOT PS/2 to USB!

 

[mizzouXC]

Uh.. yeah I did and all of my adapters work with my ps2 kvm switches... nice try.

Originally posted by: Pothead

Originally posted by: mizzouXC
this adapter comes free with most usb mice.... what a steal..

Did you not read wallsfd949's post? :disgust:

 

[PepperBreath]

Originally posted by: Keltron
total comes out $13.59 after shipping. I can pickup a usb keyboard at local store for $10. and the same converter is sold at Big Lots for $10. I dont think this is a hot deal

Yeah. If you have a Big Lots in the area, they sell the same USB > PS2 Mouse/Keyboard adapter there for $10.

I tried it for a few days but didn't care for it. My Intellimouse lost the two side buttons and it seemed like the repeat key speed on the keyboard went way down. It wasn't adjustable either. It took forever to delete whole sentences for instance. Plugged the KB back into the PS/2 port and the mouse back into a USB port.

Can anyone tell me if all USB keyboards are like this or is this the result of using the adapter? Fortunately, I tried it with my Playstation 2 and it seemed to work for online games so it's not a total waste.

 

[DavidTan]

I was almost bought it. I thought this was playstation controller to usb.. LMAO

 

[Parasitic]

Pretty good deal. SVC has it for $9.99, and two years ago I bought a CueCat single-device PS/2 to USB adapter from Radio shack for $10.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: TekDemon

Originally posted by: c627627
Do not use USB mouse without a PS/2 adaptor and avoid USB keyboards.

They do not work in DOS, BIOS.

USB signals can be processor intensive so the system will run faster if PS/2 port is used.

Actually guys, at the same sampling rate, a USB mouse(or keyboard really) is MUCH more CPU efficient than a PS/2 mouse...

The effort needed by the system to constantly poll the PS/2 port actually used quite a bit of CPU...

If you don't believe me, run the same mouse at the same polling rate on PS/2 and USB and look at your CPU charts when you're moving the mouse around. There should be a BIG difference if you have a slower PC(I suppose it'd be hard to tell if you had some 3.6Ghz overclocked P4 or something)
Scrolling around in explorer uses up to 7%(it fluxes but 7's the highest) of my CPU to do the mouse stuff...but that includes a lot of drawing, etc.

In IE it seems to use more, probably because I'm typing this right now and it's probably trying to figure out if I'm switching windows, or about to click something, whatever(I say this because iexplorer.exe was the one with rising CPU usage during this).

But if you aren't moving your USB mouse around it drops quickly to 0%. I think a PS/2 mouse would keep using CPU regardless since it has to keep polling the port.

Actually, you've got that almost completely backwards. The PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports have their own microcontroller (the keyboard controller) handling the serial bus inputs, and runs as a slave CPU to the main CPU using interrupts to signal when data is ready. Any intelligently-designed USB host controller will be set up likewise, however there are quite a few (usually non-Intel chipsets), that require the main host CPU to poll the USB ports. This is of course highly inefficient.
The USB protocol itself has quite a bit of overhead in places too. Honestly, I think this whole PS/2 vs. USB thing, at least for input devices, is a wash, performance-wise. I've seen more noticable performance hits happen, when third-party mouse drivers are installed. For example, the Logitech mouse drivers perform some functions in a user-mode service, not as part of the kernel-mode driver interrupt subroutines, which means that if the system is under heavy stress, the mouse pointer may lag because the user-mode service has a severe delay before being scheduled to run, and the mouse pointer update data *must* be processed by that service before being passed onto Windows. Whereas MS's own built-in mouse driver has minimal features, but doesn't require an additional user-mode service to run in the background to process mouse input data. This user-mode service is what is probably showing up as CPU load when you were testing, because normally, kernel-mode CPU time isn't shown.

 

[kevman]

FWIW....the mouse rate averages I got from a PS/2 Mouse Vs a USB Mouse


PS2 = 53
USB = 124


This is on a 1.6 system OC'd to 2.24