Seeing those heatsinks on there, just to drive a PS2 keyboard&mouse, is facepalm worthy.

The one with the USB ports makes me think it is just a usb controller with a PS2-USB adapter on the pcb.

Oh wait, the power connection and the other IDC header on the ones with the heatsink is likely also just a USB-PCIe card with a PS2-USB adapter on board. ugh.

Which leaves the first one PS2-PCI ... too bad we can't see the chip. It definitely has a PS2-USB-PCI vibe to it.

All in all, I, myself, wouldn't bother too much with it.

SIIG made one long ago that worked for some PCI boards but are discontinued. Have not tried any of the new chinese ones....

Hmm, i asked some sellers about BIOS/UEFI/Freedos support.. and i got 1 response unsupported, he claims that i asked technicians and i asked for double check..

Well in description is drivers less and support in Windows 98.. which would imply that this claim is not right.

I have tried to zoom photos, on 1 it seems to be some Asmedia (its details are unreadable) chip and it could imply usage of asmedia USB3 controller, but it would never work with Win98,
im not sure if asmedia are make some USB2 or other similar chips.

I don't want to be the first guinea pig and haggle about returns, maybe someone already got burned, or can buy it within company as part of research.. I had to scale down in last year, i got burned out for change 🙁

ChatGPT claims that there were chips with Intel i8042 or its clones.. but it often lies, there are supposed card names:
SIIG JJ-PS2012-S6 - PCI
Advantech PCI-1602B - PCI
ICP Deutschland XXX more models PCI + PCI-e
Supermicro AOC-LPIPMI-LANG-PS2 - PCI-e
ASUS PIKE RAID Cards with Legacy IO

Keywords supposed to be "PCI-E PS/2 card native" or "PCI-E legacy IO card".

Its also unclear with PCI cards would work with PCI-E PCI bridges and if yes with which chip, because there are more solution and my testing with PCI-E to PCI are adpaters is mix bag, it could work, or even it is mostly working, but not for every card on every board..

I was digging a bit more. I found this - Advantech PCI-6771 , not even heatsink, but fan.. and it also seems to have own x86 CPU Pentium III / Celeron and memory, even Trident video card working within Win98 and compact flash support, i know that is overkill.. but tried someone with access to server grade of HW such cards within normal PCI, does it work, or it needs some special server bios?

Manual attached.

ruthan wrote on 2025-01-14, 13:47:

I was digging a bit more. I found this - Advantech PCI-6771 , not even heatsink, but fan.. and it also seems to have own x86 CPU Pentium III / Celeron and memory, even Trident video card working within Win98 and compact flash support, i know that is overkill.. but tried someone with access to server grade of HW such cards within normal PCI, does it work, or it needs some special server bios?

That's a single-board-computer. It's an entire PC on a PCI card, hence why it has a vga controller, chipset, cpu etc. It either uses the PCI bus *only* for power, or to talk to other PCI cards (scsi controlls, video cards, network etc). Normally you would use it on a 'dumb' PCI board

It really doesn't have anything to do with providing serial/parallel/ps2 ports in a PCI motherboard (other than the fact it *is* an entire motherboard itself).

Ok thanks for explanation, i know that there are SCSSI controllers with own cpu and memory, so this could be something similar.

Even the first card is a usb to ps2 implementation. The NEC chip is a usb root bridge.

The AliExpress listing for the card confirms that it’s USB.

Yeah i noticed the same today.
So far only SIIG JJ-PS2012-S6 card seems native PS/2 how ChatGPT call it, but its PCI only.

ASUS PIKE - seems like mistake so far i found only some Sas controllers, i had not idea that Asus are trying to do some servers stuff too.

I also found - 6 years old thread with same goal, i searched for it before posting, but di not find it:
PCI PS/2 Controller Cards
But its also without any positive result.

Hmm, i checked SIIG PS/2 i bit closer and in manual and overview is that it does not support DOS and Bios, so its made through USB too..

So it seems that only option how to add PS/2 to board without it only mouse through COM to PS/2 convertor.. and keyboard only because some Mainboard modification, if its possible to get it from IO chip on modern board at all.
Yeah i know there is some Legacy USB keyboard emulation in some modern BIOSes, but it has issues its better than nothing but not reliable..

Here is SIIG manual:

Its not entirely new thing, there are some threads how someone added PS/2 to old 486 board:
Adding PS/2 mouse components to a Chaintech 486SPM
Native PS/2 mouse implementation for 386/486 boards using the keyboard controller

Soooo, I actually bought one of the PCIe to PS/2 chinesium boards a while back and have yet to try it.

My thought is that if your motherboard BIOS had the option for "legacy USB", which emulates PS/2 over USB from my understanding is that one of these would actually work fine in DOS/Win9x with PS/2 devices. I may be able to test this evening as I already have a project I am working on.

This emulation from my experience is not realizable, especially for mouse in Dos on Gigabyte board when i tried it.. Maybe someone did more testing.
Im not sure how it would work for DOS/WIndows 98 combo, how legacy USB settings emulation works after proper Win98 USB drivers are loaded.. I tried it somewhat worked, but there where problems.. i dont remember details, maybe not working mouse for safe mode.

From previous testing, usb devices hooked up to a USB 3.0 or higher port will not work in 9x. This was the issue I was running into with one system.

I wonder what about keyboard connected to serial port? Some boards without PS/2 ports, still have serial port.

You can use mouse on serial port, but what about keyboard? Some server keyboards actually have serial port cable beside of PS/2.. They have some company ID card card reader too, maybe its for it, maybe not.. Servers are often connected to some terminal / console displays, im not really sure how its wiring works..

I did a bit of research, it seems that keyboard to serial port programs exists for quite a long of time, at least for Windows from 9x,NT4 above:
https://www.billproduction.com/
https://www.priority1design.com.au/datasnip.html
https://sourceforge.net/projects/serialporttokey/
https://github.com/Robotto/serial2keyboard - Win / MacOS / Linux
So only DOS version is missing and somehow manage to start it these utilities as service to work for OS login and even better inject them right after / during Windows install to fix no PS/2, not working USB problem.. Of course, you can probably inject some VNC server too, but it needs to be make network to work, during the install.

I also found vogons thread about it:
RS-232 keyboard interface, would it be possible ? and dosgat18 - which could be solution for DOS..
there are mentioned these links:
Thread here: https://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum/genres/pcs- … port#post700389
Led to here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160810043813/ht … ds/barwedge.zip
I had to time to read them right now, but it anyone else could do research too.

And of course we would need to find some compatible keyboard or maybe even some USB to COM adapters..

I have tried my "server" keyboard Compaq SK-3320 with serial port cable with all of these, but it seems that serial cable is really used only for card reader stuff..

Ok, just one more try, so somewhere cheap PCI card with serial ports which looked old enough to not be just some Chinese USB emulation half-fake..

Its. Netmos mm9835cv it supposed to be from Moshpit(Moschip).

It claims to be Microsoft compatible, whatever it means and there is actual guide how to make it working in real Dos and some utility for serial port remapping, there is Syba variant of same document made by Asix company.
There is also some manual which claims Windows 95 to Windows XP support.
Syba has some card with this chip too, where is Windows NT support mentioned and it product info that is replacement for new boards without serial ports and claims to support at least modems and some IRQ sharing so it could coexist with other devices. https://www.sybausa.com/shop/it-products/lega … card-sd-pci-2s/
- there are drivers to download DOS + Win9x up to Win8.1 even 64bit.

Question is still will it run serial mouse for DOS, or its just other developer board without practical value for gamer?
If yes on what boards - chipset you are guessing that it will work? Aby change with PCI-E to PCI adapters?

I also found video about serial port keyboard, there is even PS/2 adapter for it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pto9zsK_rIw
Here is product page, this company even produce Fallout like Wrist keyboard:
https://www.l3sys.com/

Ok i made some progress i made Serial mouse working in Windows 7 32bit with Moschip NetMos adapter, with 9835 PCI Multi-I/O driver.

So mouse could work with this card, it has Dos driver too, that would be next step.

I disabled on board serial port in the bios to avoid collisions, serial ports are registered as Com3 + Com4 .. I not if matters, but board is Asus P5Q one of newest Core Quad mbs it can handle 16GB of RAM.
There is even LPT 3 present, but my card as just free solder place for LPT, but there not pins..

I have tried it with Linux, but after hour of so, i gave up.. Its not important.

Update: Windows XP is proven too.

Pure PS2 keyboard controller will never work thru PCI/ISA card for two reasons:
1. Chipset Decodes accesses to IO ports 60/64h and redirects those accesses to
- discrete keyboard controller chip somewhere on the board. Chipset drives dedicated CS line to the Keyboard Controller chip (KBC). KBC sits on a dedicated X bus that is isolated from ISA.
- fully internally to build in ps2 controller.

in either case neither ISA nor PCI see any IO activity when BIOS reads keyboard IO.

2. KBC lights up IRQ1 which is directly connected to discrete Interrupt controller chip (PIC), chipset, or fully internal in the Chipset.
- there is no IRQ1 line on ISA bus
- PCI bus cards dont have any control over which IRQ they generate, all depends on IRQ routing table. A PCI card could never generate IRQ1 (keyboard interrupt).

TLDR: Impossibru.

What is possibru is a card with small BIOS overlay eprom. Option ROM could intercept INT 16h (BIOS keyboard services) and pass scancodes from whatever device it wants (serial keyboard, Atmega reading real PS2 keyboards etc). This would work for simplest DOS programs, but not most games nor BIOS as those read 60/64h directly. Games to build their own map of pressed/released keys and avoid keyboard repeat and other nonsense, Bios for simplicity.

Maybe with modern UEFI it would be possible to make overlay ROM pass keyboard to UEFI firmware as if it was native device. There is Intel UEFI dev framework floating on the web but I have no clue how any of that modern stuff works and dont want to learn it 😀 Perhaps in 20 years when it becomes vintage 😜

For nineties stuff PS2 keyboard is just AT keyboard with smaller plug, all you need is a passive adapter.
PS2 mice you either
replace KBC chip Native PS/2 mouse implementation for 386/486 boards using the keyboard controller
add ps2 dongle pluggable directly to motherboard PS/2 6 pin cable - are they hard to find? got my ps/2 backplate... still no mouse working? ***SOLVED!
mod motherboard that omitted some components Adding native PS/2 mouse components to your MSI MS-4144 motherboard
add ps2 to serial converter on ISA card Another PS/2 Mouse ISA (ISA8) card adapter

Ok there is still serial port and as proven that there are are serial port keyboards.. Well until, you disprove it too..

I dont like impossible response, with such big knowledge, you should be able to find some workaround, or i have in couple years someone will do.