The Belt Onion club
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@topspin Something is wrong there. This appears to be a picture of an animal, but not a screengrab of a picture taken with a phone from the screen of a digital camera.
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@Zecc said in The Belt Onion club:
As someone who was born in the mid 1900s, I see nothing wrong with this.
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@Gern_Blaanston those of us born in the later part of the 1900’s do, on the other hand.
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@Gurth The dial plate is missing!
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@Gurth said in The Belt Onion club:
GTFO, this thing has a CE sign and LEDs!
I wonder if I still have that 1920s radio headphone. I changed the banana plugs for a 6.3mm so with an adaptor it would still work on decent cellphones.
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@boomzilla Doesn't work for me; not like that, anyway. On my back, I wouldn't be able to breathe, and that's not fun. Even if I can breathe, I usually can't stay asleep for more than an hour at a time, nor for more than about 6 hours total.
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@HardwareGeek ok, try this:
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I always wondered about the middle one, did it really matter which was plugged where?
I followed the colour-code because... well, mostly the same reason I neatly organise my cables, and also because I never really gave it any thought to do otherwise. So I never tried the other way round. But there doesn't seem like there would be a good reason for the two plugs to truly behave differently (though of course there could but then they could have made two different plugs (or just variations of the plugs with e.g. one more/less pin in one case)). Then again, while the icons are just small and cheap hints to help people plug stuff, the colouring of them is more work for the computer manufacturers and the devices manufacturers, so going through all that effort just for giving a non-mandatory hint to (l)users seems quite unlikely.
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@remi said in The Belt Onion club:
I always wondered about the middle one, did it really matter which was plugged where?
I guess the answer is: it depended on what the host was able to handle. This was a thing:
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@remi said in The Belt Onion club:
I always wondered about the middle one, did it really matter which was plugged where?
The pinouts of the connectors are the same, but most computers will not recognize devices connected to the wrong port.
Also, slightly earlier on that page it talks about the single port with two colours:
Sometimes the port also allows one of the devices to be connected to the two normally unused pins in the connector to allow both to be connected at once through a special splitter cable.
Pins 2 and 6 are not normally connected on a PS/2-port. These two-colour combo ports do connect them, though, so that if a PS/2-splitter cable is used, that will connect pins 2 and 6 to the mouse.
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@Gurth thanks, TIL.
Is there a reason why the choice was made to only use a different colour rather than a different pin layout that would have physically prevented mis-plugging stuff? Since there are apparently (at least) 2 unused pins, it shouldn't be an issue to remove one of them.
For example (I have no idea about the real use of pins so this is just to illustrate the idea) you could have keyboards plugs where pin 1 is missing (both on male/female sides) and mice plugs where it's, say, pin 3 that is missing. This way you physically can't plug one into the other. And if the female side (on the computer) accepts both layouts then it can use a "full" plug like the one we actually have.
That would make both plugs as variants of the same plug rather than strictly identical ones which obviously makes manufacturing (and standardisation etc.) a bit harder, but I don't think that would have been much worse than mandating a specific colour of plug/label (and IIRC the idea of a plug without all the pins is something that was already used in other standards)?
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@remi I believe that on the original PS/2 hardware it was actually possible to switch them over - and there’s nothing electrically preventing it even in later setups, just that the software expects keyboard on one port and mouse on the second, but that at some point the PS/2 was smart enough to just figure it out.
I could be wrong, it’s been years since I touched actual PS/2 hardware.
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@Arantor that all sounds like an horrible kludge, especially when it gets to the point where the best (?) solution to an electronic/software problem was to use bits of plastic of different colours.
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@remi coloured plastic is cheaper than dev time, clearly.
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@Arantor plastic from China, code from India :two_buttons_meme:
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@Arantor if it was just one manufacturer who did that, definitely I'd say it's a case of "meh, ship it."
But the solution ended up being a standardised one, with things like the exact colour of each plastic unambiguously defined (peri peri and fuzzy peach?). That means hours if not months of committee meetings and it's in the 90's so that was people actually flying around to physically meet. And all that was apparently easier than fixing the code...
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@remi not everyone standardised on it. Compaq's keyboard connector was orange for example, and the original connectors from IBM were black.
But the green/purple standard was set out by Microsoft and Intel in the PC 97 spec and everyone was basically told to just adopt it and move on with their lives.
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@Arantor said in The Belt Onion club:
@remi I believe that on the original PS/2 hardware it was actually possible to switch them over - and there’s nothing electrically preventing it even in later setups, just that the software expects keyboard on one port and mouse on the second, but that at some point the PS/2 was smart enough to just figure it out.
I could be wrong, it’s been years since I touched actual PS/2 hardware.
The pinout, electrical signaling and low-level protocol are identical. And PS/2 devices send an identify code at startup, which makes it trivial to detect whether the thing connected is a mouse or a keyboard. So it is very likely that at one time, the idea was that you could plug any device into any connector.
IIRC what killed that feature was backwards compatibility. The port addresses and IRQ numbers for keyboard and mouse were traditionally hardcoded, so it was difficult to support such flexibility without adding one layer of indirection (and thus potential problems). Especially since you can't know which device is which until you've started actually communicating with it. And you also need to anticipate the case of some joker plugging in two keyboards or two mice.
I believe a few manufacturers attempted to support it, but it didn't work that well in practice.
PS: the PS/2 standard was already roughly 10 years old when color-coding was standardized.
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@Zerosquare Yup, hence my belief that the original PS/2 stuff did actually do this because the PS/2 architecture was special and all about the MCA compared to other stuff, and it was everyone else taking the easy routes for things.
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@Zerosquare said in The Belt Onion club:
it is very likely that at one time, the idea was that you could plug any device into any connector.
It does sound like that, but I just found this:
That’s from the “Guide to Operations” of the PS/2 Model 30 286, which on page 1-2 specifically says to:—
Connect the keyboard cable to the system unit keyboard connector (1)
That suggests ports 1 and 2 were different somehow even in September 1988 when that guide was published.
It looks like there were no labels next to the ports, though, other than
1
and2
:Could it just be that IBM decided to only tell people to connect keyboards to port 1 and pointing devices to port 2 even if you could do it the other way around in practice?
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@Gurth if I was on speaking terms with my family I'd borrow my stepdad's Model 30 (though not sure if 286 or not) and try it. But I am not on speaking terms with them and this isn't a good enough reason to break the otherwise 5 years of happy ignorance.
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@Gurth said in The Belt Onion club:
Could it just be that IBM decided to only tell people to connect keyboards to port 1 and pointing devices to port 2 even if you could do it the other way around in practice?
I don't think so. I recall seeing an IBM PS/2 displaying a specific error screen when the mouse and keyboard were swapped. And standard PC software that does low-level keyboard access definitely won't work if you plug it into the mouse port instead, unless there's some added hardware magic to make it transparent.
I assume the feature was planned, and then cancelled when IBM found out that it caused problems in practice. I vaguely recall reading something about this...
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@Gurth Fixed in post.
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Something I realised a bit later: the locations of those ports are slightly awkward. The keyboard cable plugs into the left rear of the keyboard, from the POV of somebody working with the computer. However, the computer end of that cable goes into the port on the right (from the same POV), while the cable for the pointing device goes into the left port when 90+% of users will put that pointing device to the right of the keyboard.
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@Gurth IBM computer keyboards frequently have their cable exit at the top right edge of the keyboard. Imagine plugging that in with the keyboard cable passing by the right-hand side of the computer.
If you now add a mouse to the setup then you put it to the right of the keyboard and run its cable next to the keyboard cable without crossing it. The most natural thing then is to plug the mouse into a port to the right of the keyboard port.
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@Gurth said in The Belt Onion club:
about nine out of ten people are right-handed, and a good number of left-handed people use a mouse right-handed because that’s where they commonly encounter it on shared computers
Some of us have mice on both sides of the keyboard. I have a right-handed ergonomic mouse on the right side of my keyboard and a left-handed ergonomic mouse on the left side of my keyboard. At least on this computer. I only have one mouse on my work laptop, and it's a generic ambidextrous mouse with the buttons configured in the normal (right-handed) way. The computer next to this one also has only a single mouse, a right-handed ergonomic mouse, mostly because I've only been able to find one company that makes left-handed ergonomic mice, and they apparently use the cheapest possible switches for the buttons, and they break quickly.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Belt Onion club:
Some of us have mice on both sides of the keyboard.
I'm reminded of a famous scene from NCIS.
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@JBert said in The Belt Onion club:
IBM computer keyboards frequently have their cable exit at the top right edge of the keyboard.
Per the manual, the one for this computer had it bottom left, from the POV of the user. My point is that, with the ports on the back of the computer the way they are, the mouse cable will cross that of the keyboard.
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@boomzilla said in The Belt Onion club:
MIDI (bottom right)
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Uses a 5 pin connector, but only 3 pins are actually used.
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People asked: "Why is there a 5 pin connector if only 3 pins are used? Why not just use a standard 3 pin XLR connector so we can use the cables that we already have?"
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The answer was: "We'll use the other 2 pins someday."
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It has now been 42 years.
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Just for fun, the pins are numbered out of order:
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@Zerosquare said in The Belt Onion club:
@HardwareGeek said in The Belt Onion club:
Some of us have mice on both sides of the keyboard.
I'm reminded of a famous scene from NCIS.
I used to watch NCIS a few years ago and I seem to remember scenes of 2 people typing on the same keyboard at the same time.
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@Gern_Blaanston That isn't strictly true. Although non-standard, there are devices that use them to power the other end, paving way to fleecing you for cables that you know have 5 wires and all connected.
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@Gern_Blaanston said in The Belt Onion club:
Why not just use a standard 3 pin XLR connector so we can use the cables that we already have?
Prevents someone accidentally plugging an audio cable into a MIDI device.
@Gern_Blaanston said in The Belt Onion club:
Just for fun, the pins are numbered out of order:
The strange numbering is for retro-compatibility with 3-pin DIN connectors (whose pins are in positions 1, 2 and 3).
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@Gurth said in The Belt Onion club:
about nine out of ten people are right-handed, and a good number of left-handed people use a mouse right-handed because that’s where they commonly encounter it on shared computers
Being left-handed, I use the mouse right-handed because I can mouse and write () without juggling mouse/pen with mousepad/paper.
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@Watson said in The Belt Onion club:
@Gurth said in The Belt Onion club:
about nine out of ten people are right-handed, and a good number of left-handed people use a mouse right-handed because that’s where they commonly encounter it on shared computers
Being left-handed, I use the mouse right-handed because I can mouse and write () without juggling mouse/pen with mousepad/paper.
I use a mouse (sometimes) left-handed because RSI; I alternate to give one wrist or the other some rest. I use a mouse (mostly) right-handed because that's how I learned (on shared machines). Also, because gaming; using a mouse and WASD with the same hand really doesn't work very well (and neither does trying to WASD right-handed). And finally because the scroll wheel on my left-handed mouse is non-functional.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Belt Onion club:
I use a mouse (sometimes) left-handed because RSI
RSI, right
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@HardwareGeek: have you tried a vertical mouse? I've been told they can help with RSI.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Belt Onion club:
I use a mouse (sometimes) left-handed because RSI
I used to have problems with incipient RSI until I started mostly using machines (laptops) with touchpads and substantial raised space in front of the keyboard. That helped me a lot; as long as I keep my wrists warm now, they're pretty happy.
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@Zerosquare said in The Belt Onion club:
@HardwareGeek: have you tried a vertical mouse? I've been told they can help with RSI.
Yes, that's what I use (except the generic mouse on the work laptop, because I don't have another working vertical mouse). I've only found one company that makes left-handed ones, and they tend to be unreliable and short-lived.
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@boomzilla I wonder if it's related to this plug
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And that one, and many other strange-looking ones:
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@Zerosquare said in The Belt Onion club:
And that one, and many other strange-looking ones:
New-fangled shite, who needs to unplug their phone anyway? There's nothing else to plug it anyway.
In Germany I ran the ISDN line through one of these, just because it came with the flea-market W48 phone we used for stylez in the student apartment (sound quality is surprisingly good):