clone macintosh's ps/2 ports?

[chelseayr]

wasn't sure if this should be posted here or in the peripheral section instead...

is the ps/2 port just as good as the adb port (especially to manually select boot drives at chime) or it has its limits even if paired with an older basic non-multimedia keyboard?

had to wonder  about this as I'm trying to resume my interest in wanting to get one particular clone system since last year!

 

[jessenator]

I'm not at all convinced* Apple (or Motorola, PCC, et al) ever produced a driver for PS/2 (for MacOS). Those were there for PREP/CHRP compliance on the clones. Apple, even on their LPX-40 (Tanzania) 4400/7220 didn't have the PS/2 populated, unlike Motorola's StarMax line which was the same board, essentially. Just one gesture on how Apple felt about PREP/CHRP, I suppose.

My own (anecdotal) experience on my StarMax (no drivers at all, just plugged in pre-power-on) is that PS/2 mice work rather terribly: horrible click latency to the point where you have to do geriatric clicks (read: hold down longer) to get it to register. And since 3rd party Mac mice were ADB, it's doubtful right button support is enabled at all on a device plugged into the PS/2 port. When I plug in a standard PS/2 mouse the right click just freezes the mouse until you let go… I would also have infrequent cursor position latency, but that wasn't precisely repeatable.

I don't recall my experience testing my Dell PS/2 keyboard, but I'm sure it was similar to the mouse experience. I can test that again, too.


TL;DR MacOS didn't have specific PS/2 driver support AFAIK and have seen in clone maker installation disks, *though I haven't had an image of PowerComputing's MacOS 8 disc to test…

Did Umax ever have a MacOS 8 disc? I know they were still making 603/604 systems which *ahem* might have shipped with a G3 card in a separate box…

 

[paws]

I'm quite sure there was no discernible difference between ADB and PS/2 when I was testing my StarMax tower. I'd kind of assume that, for compatibility, whatever is handling PS/2 just turns it into the same kind of data that normally comes in over ADB, and that that's why there's no driver needed.

 

[chelseayr]

thanks jessenator and paws, and yeah the adb port is still there so I may as well as rather just use that alone