I agree, this is a neat little card as it is. Definitely elegant and useful.

However, it would be lovely if we had a (open?) design for a modern multi I/O card as well, which allows newbies to easily get a system up and running.

Leave it as is. There is a 100 billion normal I/O cards out there.

On pretty much any motherboard or I/O card, you can re-configure the serial ports to either disable them or give COM 1/2 to the PS/2 card.

And send me 5 of them 😀 .... Optical PS/2 mice are brilliant compared to serial ball mice.

GigAHerZ wrote:

Why not to keep it really simple? Having a PS/2 port + another COM port just because it can be had almost for free? (As there are dual serial controllers around) Other stuff needs additional chips and make it more complicated... no need for than with this nice little 8bit card.

Ok, without changing too much things the 16550 Ic can be replaced with a 16552, which is a Dual UART in the same package, but in this way you have serial ports binded in couple: for example COM1 (serial)/COM3 (mouse) (3F8+3E8) or COM2 (serial)/COM4 (mouse)(2F8+2E8), you can't change addresses for each of the 2 ports individually. Is this ok for you?
EDIT:
there are still to be added the RS232 driver IC and the db9 connector.

Madowax, this is absolutely no problem! 😀 The thing today looks already amazing. My 2 cents are basically only about getting more features out of it with almost 0 cost. 😀

The RS232 driver and DB9 connector can even be made in one or another way optional. (unpopulated pads for driver and pin header for DB9)

I would prefer the ability to chose whatever resources I want rather than have changes in pairs...
1 single dedicated com port that can be com1/2/3/4 is really versatile.

I also recommend adding a header to the card so that the PS/2 connector can be routed to another part of the computer chassis.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I also recommend adding a header to the card so that the PS/2 connector can be routed to another part of the computer chassis.

That's no problem but the card is going to have its metal bracket with PS/2 port, are you thinking to some particular case that already has a ps/2 port with header? I'm just curious! 😉

GigAHerZ wrote:

Why not to keep it really simple? Having a PS/2 port + another COM port just because it can be had almost for free? (As there are dual serial controllers around) Other stuff needs additional chips and make it more complicated... no need for than with this nice little 8bit card.

This is what I think makes the most sense. Actually it is somewhat trivial, but having a serial port socket on this little marvel makes connecting a metal bracket to the PCB much easier. 😊

are you people planning to use the card in systems that have dedicated 8bit cards like the XT days?
1 card for lpt
1 card for serial
1 card for fdd controller
1 card for hdd controller
...
1 card for <insert reason>

the point of this device is to have a neat solution for the serial->ps/2 adapter . I don't get it, what's the use of a 2nd COM port and it's config limitations when you already have a couple either onboard or on some I/O card...?! why add even +5eur cost on this card ? 😕

Hm, I have 3 sound cards in my system already. My case exposes 7 slots. I might add a fourth sound card. That leaves 3 usable slots. So yeah, the more I/O I can get on one card, the better. 😀

Maybe it would be nice to simply have the PCB design for more complex cards for DIY. But in any way, OP this in his free time and I am immensely grateful for the work he did as is.

tayyare wrote:

GigAHerZ wrote:

Why not to keep it really simple? Having a PS/2 port + another COM port just because it can be had almost for free? (As there are dual serial controllers around) Other stuff needs additional chips and make it more complicated... no need for than with this nice little 8bit card.

This is what I think makes the most sense. Actually it is somewhat trivial, but having a serial port socket on this little marvel makes connecting a metal bracket to the PCB much easier. 😊

The metal bracket is Keystone 9202

with added custon hole for the mouse port
It is fixed with screws to the pcb holes already in the design (you can see them in the prototype and in the rendered board). DB9 of course is much easier.

root42 wrote:

Hm, I have 3 sound cards in my system already. My case exposes 7 slots. I might add a fourth sound card. That leaves 3 usable slots. So yeah, the more I/O I can get on one card, the better. 😀

Maybe it would be nice to simply have the PCB design for more complex cards for DIY. But in any way, OP this in his free time and I am immensely grateful for the work he did as is.

one more reason not to have too many COM ports, resource management and their lack 🤣
Don't you already have an I/O card on your system ? how do you do floppies/hdds? Even the most basic 16bit I/O card has 2x COM ports already .
Don't get me wrong I am just trying to understand the need for more COM ports or any reason one does not use an I/O card in their system.

Ok, let me put it this way: in the end I would love to see a community based, open Multi I/O card with HDD, Floppy, serial, parallel (optionally on breakout), PS/2 and XT IDE BIOS included. This way you can plop one card in the system for all your I/O needs. Right now I have multi I/O, XT IDE and I would need this card as well. Leaving no space for VGA card in my four sound card system. 😀 Or maybe even for a NIC or other adapter...

But all in all I think the simple one PS/2 port card is already awesome for a lot of people.

Now this is where i lack some knowledge - do those dual serial chips allow to disable one serial port, if wanted? Maybe we could have second COM enable jumper?

root42 wrote:

Ok, let me put it this way: in the end I would love to see a community based, open Multi I/O card with HDD, Floppy, serial, parallel (optionally on breakout), PS/2 and XT IDE BIOS included. This way you can plop one card in the system for all your I/O needs. Right now I have multi I/O, XT IDE and I would need this card as well. Leaving no space for VGA card in my four sound card system. 😀 Or maybe even for a NIC or other adapter...

But all in all I think the simple one PS/2 port card is already awesome for a lot of people.

oh now I get what you mean, yes if there could be a single card to do all that it would be a slot saver.

GigAHerZ wrote:

Now this is where i lack some knowledge - do those dual serial chips allow to disable one serial port, if wanted? Maybe we could have second COM enable jumper?

Dual UART in plcc44 uses chip select and channel select inputs, with chip select the computer cpu selects the whole DUART while with channel select the cpu chooses which of the two UARTs it wants to communicate with, basically you remove A4 ISA line from inputs of the bus decoder ICs and tie it directly to channel select, that's why you can select only serial ports binded in couple com1 and com3 or com2 and com4, between com1 and com3 addressing and between com2 and com4 addressing there is only a single bit of difference, the A4 line, when A4 line is logic high channel 1 is selected (com1 or com2) when it is logic low channel 2 is selected (com3 or com4). You can disable one channel adding some jumpers, but it will become jumpers galore. 🤣

keropi wrote:

root42 wrote:

Ok, let me put it this way: in the end I would love to see a community based, open Multi I/O card with HDD, Floppy, serial, parallel (optionally on breakout), PS/2 and XT IDE BIOS included. This way you can plop one card in the system for all your I/O needs. Right now I have multi I/O, XT IDE and I would need this card as well. Leaving no space for VGA card in my four sound card system. 😀 Or maybe even for a NIC or other adapter...

But all in all I think the simple one PS/2 port card is already awesome for a lot of people.

oh now I get what you mean, yes if there could be a single card to do all that it would be a slot saver.

I can understand that. Just want to add that for a 486 VLB or PCI this is not desirable, because IDE is better channeled through the VLB or PCI bus.
And the four sound card argument, I suppose this is more about putting as much sound cards to use as possible, so where is the limit? Put the NIC on this mouse adapter as well, VGA maybe? 😉

Madowax wrote:

GigAHerZ wrote:

Now this is where i lack some knowledge - do those dual serial chips allow to disable one serial port, if wanted? Maybe we could have second COM enable jumper?

Dual UART in plcc44 uses chip select and channel select inputs, with chip select the computer cpu selects the whole DUART while with channel select the cpu chooses which of the two UARTs it wants to communicate with, basically you remove A4 ISA line from inputs of the bus decoder ICs and tie it directly to channel select, that's why you can select only serial ports binded in couple com1 and com3 or com2 and com4, between com1 and com3 addressing and between com2 and com4 addressing there is only a single bit of difference, the A4 line, when A4 line is logic high channel 1 is selected (com1 or com2) when it is logic low channel 2 is selected (com3 or com4). You can disable one channel adding some jumpers, but it will become jumpers galore. 🤣

Thank you for that explanation!
I was asking it because it seemed that some people like to not have second COM port because they are afraid of having less generic resources (irq, addr, etc) left in the computer. They would have an option to disable the second COM port then...

Or well, if there would be empty pads for RS232 driver, empty holes for DB9 cable, then even the jumper part can be empty 2 holes - if owner wants, they can put pins there or even solder them together...

gerwin wrote:

I can understand that. Just want to add that for a 486 VLB or PCI this is not desirable, because IDE is better channeled through the VLB or PCI bus.
And the four sound card argument, I suppose this is more about putting as much sound cards to use as possible, so where is the limit? Put the NIC on this mouse adapter as well, VGA maybe? 😉

Yes, indeed. Or WiFi! 😀 Well, probably not many people have these problems. But I think still a community Multi I/O with XT IDE support would be lovely. And PS/2 instead of one serial port would also make sense.

I would still prefer a single UART design with no additional junk on it.

Makes it easier to move between computers, don't need to spend have an hour configuring it each time I move the card.