I feel like a relic…
I used to have disc with kickstart that i needed to use so my computer would boot.
I’m this old
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.
“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)
Not really? I mean it was a whole thing. OS/2, PS/2, I think maybe some PC/2? I can’t remember. Anyway it was all branded together.
missed opportunity for the mainframes to be “system/2” and not “system/360”
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.
An elegant port for a more civilized time
Hokey connections and ancient peripherals are no match for a good dongle at your side, kid.
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Nothing civilized about no hot plugging. Had to restart the whole damn computer, if the cable was loose or out at startup.
Quote joke referencing Obi Wan Kenobi…
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
i have a gaming pc built this decade that has both of those ports dude
I remember a time when they weren’t colour coded…
You guys had keyboards?
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.
My brother in Christ, I also used this
And I’m 17
the computers at my first school still used ps/2 regularly when i went there and im 15…
old
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
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.
I’m wondering, is it still the case for mobos with Super IO?
Super IO does still use interrupts as far as I know. The PS/2 protocol is interrupt-driven, so it’s not possible to use a PS/2 keyboard or mouse without interrupts.
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
I had a little book with the settings for almost every brand and model of hard drive that existed when published.
And when the bits feel off the end and you had to wind them back on with a pencil.
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
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
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.
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.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with this information but I’m glad it’s in my brain now.
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
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.
Considering MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
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.
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.
And because the PC only have 1 serial port, you disconnect the printer and use a parallel to serial adapter.
@josefo@leminal.space @JoMiran@lemmy.ml
Technically speaking, the joystick involved analog voltages to be converted to digital signals… And what else have ADC (analog-to-digital converters) chips? Soundcards, because ADCs are used to convert mic input, alongside the “line in”, both of which are analog voltages, into PCM signals, which are discrete (as in “non-continuous”) streams of bits. Something inverse happens for “headphone”, “speakers” and “line out” pins: a PCM stream coming from the sound driver is converted to analog voltages using a DAC.
While other ports also happened to deal with analog<->digital conversion, a soundcard was particularly specialized at this job, alongside graphic (VGA) cards (VGA has lots of analog signals), but graphic cards were already too busy with thousands/millions of pixels and, well, with computation of graphics.
Other boards aren’t so fitting for analog-digital job. For example: a NIC (Network Interface Card) already deals with digital signal so, theoretically, no conversion is necessary from/to analog. Parallel ports (those for printers) also natively deals with digital signals. Expansion cards with USB ports, same thing. And so on…
(Apologies for my blank reply if my deletion didn’t federate due to insufficient Sharkey-Lemmy federation, I mistyped enter as I was getting ready to write my message)
And because the PC only have 1 serial port, you disconnect the printer and use a parallel to serial adapter.
Yes, this is where my PC master gaming started.
All the naysayers never used a Gateway AnyKey keyboard… their loss.
Such nice keyboards. My Gateway 2000 was from 1991 and I believe they were pretty top notch at the time. It wasn’t until later that they went to shit. Through all the years and the massive amounts of mods, it didn’t fail until I retired it sometime in the mid to late 2000’s and only because home routers now did what it could do…faster and for a lot let power. It’s still in storage and I bet that if I powered it on today, it would boot.
They all got bought by acer and turned into the shittiest brand-name PCs on the planet.
Wasn’t gateway already shitty to begin with?
Nailed it! I was going to post the DIN-5 kb connector.
This one for me. Was born in 82.
Born in '88 and this was also my childhood. But to be fair, my parents bought the PC from Sears so it was probably an older, budget model. It ran Windows 3.1 and had a 16 MHz 386 with the Turbo button.
My 286 had PS/2 ports instead of the obsolete DIN keyboard/serial mouse.
smug_look_of_superiority.jpg
I’m in this picture.
Bitch
please.
(Kidding, you’re not a bitch and this isn’t a contest. But if it was…)
I don’t recognize this… Is it some sort of RF switch for connecting a computer or game system to a TV while still passing through the antenna signal? Why does it have two cables coming out the side?
Yes, it’s for an old game console or computer.
There were two common ways to connect to the TV, and this box supports both: Coaxial (still around of course) and that flat ribbon cable, which ends in two separate U shaped clips. The screws on the bottom are for the clips on the ribbon cable from the physical antenna likely mounted on the roof.
I’m from Australia and I don’t think I ever saw a flat ribbon cable there. The RF cables in Australia mostly use Belling-Lee connectors (that you just push in) rather than F-type like in the USA (that you screw in), and that’s been a standard since the 1920s, so I don’t think there’s anything that predates it in Australia.
Australia does use F connectors for cable internet, but that’s mostly a legacy network now.
Edit: Apparently Australia did use them and I’m just not old enough lol
Then you’re not as old as me. 300 ohm ribbon was pretty common in Australia, especially on crappy bunny antennas. You’d need a 300/75 ohm matching balun before feeding it into the TV.
We had flat ribbon. We used that exact unit for the atari. You screwed them into the back.
The typical ol’ “garage” b&w tended to have them too, last tv i owned with one was this century
Thanks, this helps me feel younger.
We had 300 ohm ribbon back when we had VHF TV. When we went to UHF in the '90s we also changed to coaxial cable
Coaxial cable works better at higher frequencies than 300 ohm, but needs shielding. 300 ohm doesn’t need shielding as any wave that hits it hits phase and anti-phase at the same time and has no effect
Ah, sorry I hadn’t even considered that it would be different in other places (just times) - I’m in the US, and those flat ones were present here at least as late as the 1980s and likely 1990s.
Cable Internet is very common in the US, in fact the most common kind. (2nd is DSL) So the F connectors (didn’t know that name) are everywhere. Also still used for actual antenna connections.
I am not sure if I have ever seen a Belling-Lee, but RCA used to be extremely common here until HDMI took over that role. (In fact RCA is what is on the switch box above to connect to the ‘computer’)
Yes, back when you could use a tube tv as a monitor over RF.
e: mine still works, and I’ve connected my ancient equipment to my newer flat televisions with it.
I still play my 2600.
I think the coleco vision had that.
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