USB => PS/2 => AT ?

+

Compatibility unknown 😁

Either with a motherboard that supports it and CuteMouse for the mouse support in DOS, or for older machines, this is what I do

The mouse setup you have there is almost guaranteed not to work since PS/2 signaling is different from that used for serial, and the USB-PS/2 adapter almost certainly only uses PS/2 signaling.

Could very well be - sorry for any misinformation. I think I originally took that pic as a joke 🤣 but I actually ended up using the keyboard adapter setup all the time for AT machines

I heard there's some kind of problem with that kind of keyboard setup because the usb keyboard requires more energy than the at pin can deal (I belive it's right since I never saw this kind of setup working online) (And I could actually test it since I have an at to ps2 and a p2 to usb adapter)

ibm5155 wrote:

I heard there's some kind of problem with that kind of keyboard setup because the usb keyboard requires more energy than the at pin can deal (I belive it's right since I never saw this kind of setup working online) (And I could actually test it since I have an at to ps2 and a p2 to usb adapter)

Yikes - I'm using this setup right now for a windows install on a machine with the 5 pin keyboard - I've used it on others as well.

It's an AST usb keyboard - idunno how much power it's drawing

There appears to be some Panasonic driver that works in DOS but I'm not sure what hardware it is compatible with.

That is strictly for hard drives. You will never get a USB mouse working in DOS, even if you get a PCI-USB card.

Not quite, Jorpho. If your card is UHCI compliant, here are some pretty nifty drivers that work with anything from flash drives to joysticks to keyboards and mice. They even support hotswapping.

Thank you very much keenmaster486.
It works loading USB drives without restarting, and the hotswapping function actually works in DOS!
I had a boot configuration with MSCDEX driver that loads the USB stick as a harddrive and once the USB is removed I had to restart the PC each time to load the USB... no more.

The drivers you provided are much better solution.

EDIT:
I confirm that a USB mouse works with this driver on my Socket 7 Pentium MMX.

Oh wow, that's great! I'm so glad they worked for you.

I was never able to get those drivers perfectly stable on my system; I think it may have been that my controller was going out since it was a pretty flaky eMachines system. iirc it was a Via controller; is yours an Intel?

Also I wonder if the USB joystick driver actually works.

Both Intel and VIA should work, I have two headers of Intel USB 1.0 UHCI on the old Intel 430TX motherboard.

First load USBUHCIL.
You can check what device is connected at any step with USBDEVIC.

For Mouse: Load USBMOUSE (connect mouse only after loading the drivers), (you bios has to support PS/2).
Check if mouse is found with USBMOUSE /S.
Now load CTMOUSE 1.91 (not 2.0) to load the PS/2 mouse drivers.
Basically USBMOUSE emulates a Bios PS/2 mouse using software but the Bios has to support PS/2 first.

For USB Stick: USBDISK /Disks:1 , wait a few seconds and inset the USB Stick.
Change to the new USB drive letter.

Yep, USB Joystick works.
It actually emulates it on port 201H (can be changed), but EMM386 has to be loaded for the emulation to work.
I am not a fan of Gamepads in DOS, but it definitely works.
I'm sure many people find these USB drivers useful indeed. 😀

Real DOS on my Socket 7 with a iBuffalo USB Gamepad:

Excellent!

I bought a VIA USB PCI card on eBay but couldn't find anything that uses the Intel chipset. Are there any makes or models that use that or is it Intel motherboards only?

beastlike wrote:

Either with a motherboard that supports it and CuteMouse for the mouse support in DOS, or for older machines, this is what I do […]
Show full quote

Either with a motherboard that supports it and CuteMouse for the mouse support in DOS, or for older machines, this is what I do

On keyboards that support both PS/2 and USB protocols (i.e. anything you can use those passive adapters on) it's totally possible to just cut off the USB port and solder on a PS/2 or AT DIN connector. I've done USB->AT that way and it worked fine.

keenmaster486 wrote:

Not quite, Jorpho. If your card is UHCI compliant, here are some pretty nifty drivers that work with anything from flash drives to joysticks to keyboards and mice. They even support hotswapping.

Well, well. My stars! I can't recall hearing about that before and apparently it's been around for six years.

wallaby wrote:

Excellent!
I bought a VIA USB PCI card on eBay but couldn't find anything that uses the Intel chipset. Are there any makes or models that use that or is it Intel motherboards only?

I have one of these VIA USB PCI cards from ebay too but the PC will not boot because it has some IRQ conflict with the VGA card (or existing USB implementation) on any of the PCI slot.
The USB on-board already takes some IRQ and I can't even disable it in the bios (absolutely nothing related to the USB in the AWARD bios at all) because it is one of the earliest USB implementations.

I don't see why the ebay VIA USB card should not work on a 486 with these drivers, but the system at least has to boot first.

Jorpho wrote:

Well, well. My stars! I can't recall hearing about that before and apparently it's been around for six years.

I was aware of these drivers before but did not read the manual hence they did not work when I tried them so I dismissed them immediately.
Instead I used USBASPI.SYS and DI1000DD.SYS at boot which is a much worse solution.

James-F wrote:

I have one of these VIA USB PCI cards from ebay too but the PC will not boot because it has some IRQ conflict with the VGA card (or existing USB implementation) on any of the PCI slot.
The USB on-board already takes some IRQ and I can't even disable it in the bios (absolutely nothing related to the USB in the AWARD bios at all) because it is one of the earliest USB implementations.

There are reports that NEC-based cards work better than VIA cards.
Which USB 2.0 cards for old motherboards

Okay, just in case, I bought a NEC too. I'll try them out this week.

The USB joystick is interesting. There are quite a few great USB flight sticks that could find a home with the huge DOS library of flight sims.

The drivers specifies UHCI Intel or VIA only, give it a try and report back.
USBDEVIC.COM should report if the USB controller will work.