Your mouse has to support the serial protocol for that adapter to work.

cyclone3d wrote:

Your mouse has to support the serial protocol for that adapter to work.

Ah. OK. But yes, its a PS/2 mouse, so why should it support the serial protocol? Would any PS/2 mouse be able to do this? You'd think that the support would be in the adaptor...

The adaptor is a passive one, just wires to put simply.
It's the mouse that has to support both protocols like cyclone3d mentions.
You are better off with some serial->ps2 adapter , there are several flavors here from matze79, madowax, rio444...

OK. Thanks guys. Passive adaptor it is. 😀

cyclone3d wrote:

Your mouse has to support the serial protocol for that adapter to work.

Dexxa three button mice, for instance.

gdjacobs wrote:

Dexxa three button mice, for instance.

Interesting. Did some googling for these, they are out there but they don't seem to have a scroll wheel, something I'd like since I'd use the mouse on a different range of systems.

Are any "active" adaptors out there on which any PS/2 mouse can be used?

pan069 wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

Are any "active" adaptors out there on which any PS/2 mouse can be used?

As keropi already mentioned further above, there are several such projects on Vogons from several people.

One such project is the "8BIT ISA SERIAL I/O TO PS2 MOUSE" card by forum member Madowax. Have a look in this thread: 8BIT ISA SERIAL I/O TO PS2 MOUSE

I have a feeling the point wasn't clear enough above. Let me sum up:

There are three primary interfaces for mice: Serial (RS-232), PS/2, and USB. (Also bus mice and some other less popular interfaces, but let's ignore them for now.) These three protocols are entirely different, and have different physical connectors (obviously). Some passive adapters exist to change the plug and wiring, but it does not translate the protocol at all. Those passive adapters are intended to be used with mice that have a controller chip inside that natively supports multiple protocols, and can determine which is being used by the signalling levels or how the system probes for a connected device.

During the transition from serial mice to PS/2, it was common to buy a mouse with either plug on the end of the cable, and it would ship with a passive adapter to connect to the other. The mouse itself would automatically adapt to whatever interface it was plugged in to, possibly via the adapter. Same happened with the transition from PS/2 to USB.

So, there do exist a lot of multi-lingual mice, but you have to know for sure your model can, and which protocols it supports. If it's a new mouse -- like, XP and up -- it probably doesn't support anything but USB, since by that time, USB had pretty thoroughly taken over from PS/2. Also, not all adapters are wired up the same way, since this was never a standard. There were probably some common arrangements (as there tend to be), but any manufacturer could design their adapter to do whatever they chose to do.

The solution is to have an active circuit, which natively speaks both protocols, and translates accordingly. There are community projects (linked above) and commercial products that do this, although they are not as common as you would think. The exception is anything-to-USB. You can get a USB-to-serial adapter or a USB-to-PS/2 adapter pretty easily, but this only allows newer USB-only computers to use legacy serial and PS/2 peripherals.

In comparison, PS/2 (computer) to USB (peripheral) is a relatively complicated problem to solve, requiring a micrcontroller with a full USB Host stack. Even then, it's not a guaranteed success since USB can and does implement standard (driver-less) device classes, but can also require specific drivers to support functionality beyond the absolute basics. (This is why you might see a commercial adapter say something like "does not support wireless KB/mouse.")

Serial (computer) to PS/2 (mouse) is more straight-forward, but there aren't a lot of products on the market to do it. Nobody has cared for a long time about serial mice, except for communities like this, and so communities like this are where you'll find home-brew solutions.

Hope that helps.

SirNickity wrote:

Hope that helps.

Thank you. Very helpful!

Looking into various options now. The idea is to have my 286 and 386 mice connected to my PS/2 only KVM switch (along with my other machines) so I can use a single PS/2 mouse (and keyboard) on all machines.

Most KVMs have no idea what COM port mouse protocol is and only some sort of active adapter will be able to help, in worst case you'll outright damage the PS/2 port on the KVM since COM port uses +/-12V signalling. You'll need to see if COM port support is explicitly supported by the KVM you use, and if yes, they'll also probably want a particular type of dongle too (there are several types around), part numbers of suitable things should be listed too.

Tiido wrote:

Most KVMs have no idea what COM port mouse protocol is and only some sort of active adapter will be able to help, in worst case you'll outright damage the PS/2 port on the KVM since COM port uses +/-12V signalling. You'll need to see if COM port support is explicitly supported by the KVM you use, and if yes, they'll also probably want a particular type of dongle too (there are several types around), part numbers of suitable things should be listed too.

Thanks for that.

Since the PS/2 mouse didn't work directly on PS/2 - Serial adaptor I have no illusions that the KVM switch will magically solve this issue since its another "passive" device.

Basically looking for a good solution to either stick between the KVM and PS/2-Serial adaptor or something that cuts out the adaptor I have altogether. Prefer something commercial, not a PCB solution with wires sticking out. 😀

Some KVMs do, the Belkin OmniView Pro KVMs, such as the F1D104 actually do have the ability to actively convert the PS/2 mouse signal to serial for the PCs connected up 😀
Those are very cheap to get hold of these days.

KVMs are actually the most likely way to get a commercial product to do the conversion for you, since that's often why you need it done in the first place. Else, just use a serial mouse and be done with it. With a KVM involved, you're more likely to need both types, and so the KVM may offer that service to you.

That said, protocol conversion is still fairly rare. The higher end ones, used for industrial applications, are more likely to do it because they're not trying to be as cheap as possible. Some even have external I/O adapters that you can change out as needed -- but usually those are VGA+PS/2 or VGA+USB, not serial. Your best bet will be the second-hand market.