First post, by DoomGuy II
The motherboard itself may not sound vintage by this point (yet), but it is in my eyes considering that I'm using it as a basis for my Windows XP retro gaming PC.
In any case, I recently ordered a PS/2 Y cable from eBay. One of these actually.
Reason being is that the Z77 has a PS/2 combo port on the back (half purple/half green) that would accept a PS/2 keyboard or mouse. But considering that I could only plug in one at a time, I want to see if I can be able to utilize both on the same port. You can see it down below.
So, I tried the PS/2 Y cable that I recently got in the mail and plugged it in. Unfortunately, I could not get both the mouse and keyboard working simultaneously. Only one or the other on the keyboard output on the Y-cable. Nothing happens on the mouse output.
However, I pulled out my HP Omnibook 4150 to test and see if the Y-cable was actually working properly. And sure enough, after plugging it into the PS/2 port on the laptop, with an appropriate mouse and keyboard into their respective ports, it actually worked very beautifully. I can move the mouse and operate the keyboard as normally.
So, I don't know what's up with my XP build at this point. Probably the fact that I need a specific PS/2 Y-cable for this to work, or if it's the motherboard itself and how it operates its PS/2 port. I am certainly hoping that it's not the latter. Because I actually looked up on how to operate the PS/2 combo port in its Y configuration prior to posting this topic and found this:
Unfortunately, as you can see, the FAQ is from 2017, assuming it's for motherboards made around that time, and mine is from 2012. I even looked into the Z77's BIOS and found nothing related to this.
Another thing to note is that I tried the PS/2 Y cable on another computer, being my more modern gaming rig with an ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero motherboard, which does have a PS/2 combo port. Same result as the Z77.
Now, I could use the USB ports for the mouse, but here's the thing. The XP build is setup in a KVM environment, along with two Windows 98 machines (Pentium III and AMD K6), and an MS-DOS machine (486). And unfortunately, the KVM I'm using will only accept PS/2 connections at most.
I tried looking up further information regarding the Y-splitter issue for my XP rig, but to no avail. I'm honestly really eager into using both mouse and keyboard into one combo PS/2 port without using a USB mouse or even any sort of conversion from USB to PS/2, if possible. So, any suggestions are welcome.
Official Website: https://dg410.duckdns.org/