First time I felt old yet left me smiling in a giggty way.

[-]

rjchau@reddit

...but do you still have a keyboard lying around with a DIN connector?

Your beard is most certainly grey if you do...

[-]

Professional-Heat690@reddit

👋 (ignoring the older units with built-in keyboards.....

[-]

rjchau@reddit

That's never really been a feature of the PC compatible market - more the 8 and 16 bit era.

I had two of those - a Spectravideo 318 and a Tandy Colour Computer 3.

[-]

a60v@reddit

Now blow his mind by explaining serial ports and how the communication protocol works. Then show him that it's still used today.

[-]

THEYoungDuh@reddit

We still have some ps/2 keyboards as spares if people need them, we know they won't steal them.

Also I recently purchased a 1989 Model M.

[-]

TMITectonic@reddit

Also I recently purchased a 1989 Model M.

Those were AT, right?

[-]

Colossus-of-Roads@reddit

I mean, the IBM PS/2 is the original source of the connector and they shipped largely with Model M keyboards...

[-]

BrainWav@reddit

They did make them in AT too. I had one at one point, threw it out because I was stupid.

[-]

Colossus-of-Roads@reddit

Well of course. I had an AT one attached to my 286 (and kept it through to the Celeron 433 days via a PS/2 adaptor!).

[-]

a60v@reddit

Did they ever make an XT version of the model M? I remember for a while that generic keyboards had XT/AT toggles because the protcol was different (the AT keyboards had lock lights).

[-]

IIRC, that's the year they started switching them to PS/2. I've still got one from '91 or '92 because they're easier to find parts for nowadays, though I mostly use my backlit Corsair mechanical one now. Back when you couldn't get something like that, the Model M was my goto.

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Brilliant-Advisor958@reddit

When I was much younger , I could plug in the PS/2 Keyboard and mouse with out looking.

My coworkers thought I was a savant. I just didnt tell them it was pretty easy as long as you kept the nubin in the right direction .

[-]

zon5string@reddit

But could you feel the difference between the green & purple connectors without looking?

[-]

ryanknapper@reddit

Ha! I remember when they got colors. It was a revolution.

[-]

arvidsem@reddit

PC-99 port colors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_System_Design_Guide). It was a huge improvement for the average user.

What blew my mind was when the PS/2 ports became combo ports that could be either keyboard or mouse and were both purple & green.

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a60v@reddit

I don't think that I ever saw a PC where the ports were universal, but they were on SGI workstations, which I thought was kind of neat.

[-]

eaglevision93@reddit

That still feels new to me

[-]

ender-_@reddit

You could also get Y cables for those and plug both keyboard and mouse to the single port (this was somewhat more common on older laptops).

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Ssakaa@reddit

Also fun were the custom Y cables to plug one keyboard into two machines... double boxing was inventive...

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osilo@reddit

Mouse in the house.

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Sk1rm1sh@reddit

I remember 5 pin DIN keyboards & DB9 serial mice... 🫠

When SATA became the norm it felt like working with Lego compared to IDE drives.

Those parallel ATA cables were great being about 2cm shorter than needed to insert them cleanly without putting tension on the cable, so only one side went in easily. And when you finally got the whole connector in after half an hour of working with just your index & middle finger and tried to boot it you realized the master / slave / cable-select jumper was in the wrong position and had to start all over again.

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Beach_Bum_273@reddit

My first three button mouse was a Logitech with that beefy round serial connector

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ctrocks@reddit

IDE is new-fangled tech. SCSI, MFM and RLL all the way!

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fecal_position@reddit

Apple Desktop Bus. USB in the late 80s at 230kbps. Keyboards, mice, networking …

[-]

Kurlon@reddit

Atari 8 bit line serial IO, literally the OG USB serial setup, even could push drivers over the connection and was the direct inspiration for modern USB.

[-]

jschinker@reddit

I once used a Mac keyboard as an svideo coupling because ADB and Svideo used the same connectors. And it worked!

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OSX2000@reddit

Wow, as a lifelong Mac user, I've used ADB and S-video cables interchangeably tons of times, but it never occurred to me to use a keyboard as a coupler. That's genius!

[-]

Geek_Wandering@reddit

I do not miss the bad old days. Jumpers for all manner of things. Playing IRQ roulette. SCSI ID and termination. Heads/cylinder/tracks. Loose thinnet connector in a room full of computers. I can't count the number of times I connected an ATA cable off by a pair of pins because the connector wasn't indexed. Using a small flat head and ATM card to unmangle CPU pins. Ugh. It's 8:30am and I need a drink.

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Brilliant-Advisor958@reddit

I don't know about other brands but Dell made their cables just the right length to fit and didnt give any extra power cables on some models.

I wanted to expand a free computer with a new hard drive I got from work and couldn't without unplugging the cd drive.

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SnooCupcakes4075@reddit

Hit me right in the feels.......... Lol

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kex@reddit

Don't forget all the cuts from the unfinished metal in the case.

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PaulNM81@reddit

The problem was Gateway had the colors reversed from what the industry ended up standardizing on. Real fun working at an office that was a former Gateway turned Dell shop. Always had to follow the cable to figure out if it was a keyboard or a mouse due to all the old hardware floating around.

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timbotheny26@reddit

Holy shit, yes I could! Was there an actual difference between the two or was it just a weird trick of the mind?

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DoctorOctagonapus@reddit

Purple on the bottom, green on the top!

I had a school sysadmin who drilled that into me as we were setting up computers.

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Impossible_IT@reddit

Same with USB-A/B

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sambodia85@reddit

Somehow PS/2 was easier because you could feel the nub without looking.

USB-A you need to look, and then it take 3-4 flips to get it right anyway.

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NabrenX@reddit

Nah USB A is easy, you just pick a side and regardless of which side you chose, you flip to immediately and it just goes in.

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mildlynegative@reddit

USB superposition

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anomalous_cowherd@reddit

You flip it twice.

Also watch for putting a USB A into a network port (which is not technically an RJ45).

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OhBuggery@reddit

It's like the Monty Hall problem with less logic

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ShadowSlayer1441@reddit

Nah you can text type A tactilely by whether the holes are filed or not.

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PghSubie@reddit

Wait, huh? What's the same as USBA& B ?

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Impossible_IT@reddit

Inserting into a port without looking as the OP indicates with PS2 cables.

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PghSubie@reddit

USB-A is easy. Insert it with the plastic nub downward. When it won't go in, flip it over and try again. When it still doesn't go in, flip it again and try again. This works 100%

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awful_at_internet@reddit

Nah, wizardry is afoot. Everyone knows USB exists in a quantum state of uncertainty until one attempts to plug it in.

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SevaraB@reddit

Ha, that’s like me and textured USB-A connectors. If I can feel the USB icon under my finger, I know the contacts are on the other side.

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Abject_Serve_1269@reddit (OP)

Back in the day I compared it to men and women. Purple was ladies green was men. Now use human body parts as analogy and presto, how I taught back in the day.

Not really pc these days.

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Dookie_boy@reddit

Were the purple and green interchangeable or did they have different functions ? I've used them but never quite learned the difference.

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Brilliant-Advisor958@reddit

They where physically the same but used different signals so you could not swap them.

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Dookie_boy@reddit

Was one for mouse and the other keyboard ?

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arvidsem@reddit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_System_Design_Guide

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Brilliant-Advisor958@reddit

Yes purple was keyboard and green for mouse.

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5141121@reddit

My 16 year old asked me the other day "did you know there was such a thing as a ball mouse?"

So I got to regale him with tales of working midnight helpdesk with q tips and rubbing alcohol, cleaning the rollers.

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I-baLL@reddit

A friend had an old laptop....whose power connector was basically a ps/2 port. It was the stupidest design ever. You can still find mini-din power connectors for sale

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Nexzus_@reddit

Best of both worlds

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pdp10@reddit

USB is so universal and automagical, that it's bound to cause confusion. Some people already get highly upset that not every cable is a 4-meter 80Gb/s 5-Amp 48V three-dollar cable, and that Apple refuses to use standard colors on the ports or mark them physically (viz., Macbook Neo).

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doubled112@reddit

I’ve always assumed that people are upset that you can’t really be sure what each USB-C port and cable combination will carry for you.

Sometimes it does power. Sometimes it does data transfer. Sometimes that data transfer is slow. Sometimes it does display.

If somebody tells you “my laptop has a USB-C port” what does it mean? Virtually nothing.

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pdp10@reddit

If somebody tells you “my laptop has a USB-C port” what does it mean? Virtually nothing.

It means that the cable will plug in, and it will do something if the other end is compatible. That's a lot better than having a DVI to VGA cable that doesn't fit anything...

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doubled112@reddit

Only sometimes.

I have a laptop with a USB-C port.

I have a portable display, will it display? No, physically it fits but nothing happens.

I have a USB-C charger, will it charge the laptop? No, physically it fits and nothing happens.

[-]

peeinian@reddit

We can go deeper:

I’m

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A_Nerdy_Dad@reddit

Wait is that parallel - scsi - db9 - ps2 - USB

Or parallel - parallel - db9 - ps2 - USB?

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Bloody_Insane@reddit

One day I'd love to see someone smarter than me break down what happens to the data between these adapters, in very technical detail

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hutacars@reddit

It just doesn't work. But that won't stop me from wanting to believe you can just print all your documents and they'll save to the flash drive.

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sideline_nerd@reddit

I don’t think any of these are protocol converters, just passive adapters in the ps/2 family

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arvidsem@reddit

They don't even work with USB HID. The mice/keyboards that worked with the pin adapters were actually dual mode USB/PS/2 devices.

It actually takes an active device to get modem USB HID devices to speak PS/2. Something like this: HIDman - USB to PS/2 converter

[-]

throwawayPzaFm@reddit

modem USB HID devices to speak PS/2

modeRn! This threw me for a loop I was trying to figure out how the f* that would work on AT.

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arvidsem@reddit

Damnit. r/keming is calling I guess

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throwawayPzaFm@reddit

That's an entirely passive adapter stack, they only change the port shape and wire counts. I'll start with the base and limit options going up:

AT/RS-232 on a DB25 connector, to AT/RS-232 on a DE9 connector, to AT only on a PS/2 connector (not enough wires for RS-232), to AT only on an USB connector. The peripheral device itself will see the signaling and downgrade the protocol to AT, this is common.

And finally there's the BT dongle. If it's some special AT-BT bridge for peripherals then it'll work, but that setup will not run a regular USB-BT bridge because the only protocol that stack can offer is AT.

Personally I haven't used an AT-BT dongle or seen one in the wild but I'm not ruling it out.

The only way to get USB out of that stack would be to use an RS-232/(USB|BT) bridge and skip the PS/2 adapter. And you'd still just get the ability to interface with the RS-232 via USB|BT, not an actual USB port that can drive a mouse/flash drive.

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Apart_Butterfly_332@reddit

Nice, now lets see Paul Allens adapter.

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asdlkf@reddit

The tactile feel of the pins mating with each connector.

The tasteful selection of PC99 port colors.

The raised texture on the thumb screws as they tighten.

Oh my god; it even has cable strain support.

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AndreMars@reddit

I like how this is more of a memory than anything for me.

If you didn’t have boxes and drawers of adapters such as these, you weren’t serious about your job.

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erwarne@reddit

I am both triggered and intrigued

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TinderSubThrowAway@reddit

I am clearly tired and thought, there’s a PS5 now, how do they not know there was a ps2 before that?

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keijodputt@reddit

My kids got hyped with a USB-to-PS/2 adapter they dug up from the old cables box; I had my IBM keyboard + Genius Netmouse Pro from before broadband was available or even them in plans connected to that for a decade.

Alas, everything is wireless, now.

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koopz_ay@reddit

xkcd 10000 👍

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hutacars@reddit

TIL at the ripe old age of 32, I am old.

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fresh-dork@reddit

FB memes are currently using a 386 or 486 as the old guy computer for when you got started, and that's about a decade after me.

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JustNilt@reddit

LOL, right? My first computer was a Vic20, which was IIRC back when the 8086 was state of the art on the Intel side of things!

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fresh-dork@reddit

c64. the 128 was a nice update.

current kit is absurd by comparison

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JustNilt@reddit

I am constantly blown away both with how much computational power I carry around in my pocket every day. If someone told 8yo me the technical details of my literal pocket computer used mostly as a phone, I'm certain he'd ask, "Sure but what about the flying cars?!"

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fresh-dork@reddit

he'd ask, "Sure but what about the flying cars?!"

he's 8, he doesn't know how stupid people are.

meanwhile, the newish computer in the next room has 24 cores, 500G ram, several TB disk, an A6000, and is there for my amusement. in 1985, it'd be half the world's compute.

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JustNilt@reddit

he's 8, he doesn't know how stupid people are.

Oh, he knows how stupid some people are, just not how prevalent that is.

meanwhile, the newish computer in the next room has 24 cores, 500G ram, several TB disk, an A6000, and is there for my amusement. in 1985, it'd be half the world's compute.

Yet it takes up almost none of that room instead of most of it. :)

[-]

fresh-dork@reddit

right. the beast that i have sits on a shelf, or serves as a footrest. runs on house current, requires no special AC. kinda loud if you crank it, but we can't have everything

[-]

JustNilt@reddit

we can't have everything

Not yet, anyway. Give it another 4 decades or so, though, and maybe we will! /s

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HayabusaJack@reddit

Timex/Sinclair Z81, then Color Computer 1, then IBM PC with DOS 1.0.

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AntiAd-er@reddit

First “personal” computer I used was a Data General Nova 820. It stood six feet tall and in 19” racking. Only had one terminal a Tektronix graphical display with a green screen on which one could draw but changes needed the entire screen to be erased with a flash and then redrawn. Then one day an 8080 development kit arrived on my desk.

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Colossus-of-Roads@reddit

Absolutely, I'm not that old and my first OC was an XT clone.

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MyDadsGlassesCase@reddit

I asked someone at work why there was still a NetWare CI class in ServiceNow and then had to spend 20 mins explaining about "The before times".

I'm so old.

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I_like_microwave@reddit

Wait untol they start bringing up the idea of a housephone ( landline ) thinking they thought of a brilliant idea , phone for the whole house

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Assumeweknow@reddit

Ive thrown out so many ps2 devices its not funny.

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frac6969@reddit

I have a shelf full of brand new triangular Logitech Mouseman. Didn’t expect the PS/2 port to disappear so fast.

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bubblegumpuma@reddit

There are a surprising amount of consumer motherboards that still have had a PS/2 port up to recently. Probably because it's almost free, since they're usually using a Super I/O chip anyway.

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GremlinNZ@reddit

Dunno what you're talking about, my personal machine still has 1x PS/2.

Nowhere in sight for a long time on corporate ones tho.

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cjbarone@reddit

Hopefully, you also taught him they aren't hot-plugable too

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UninvestedCuriosity@reddit

God... Not even AT

You get to a point where you realize you've abandoned more knowledge than people have arrived with. I still remember the disagreements of just letting go of one box of gender changers and that keeping 3 was still fine.

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Kerblaaahhh@reddit

Pretty sure the feds are gonna ban those soon anyway.

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ctrocks@reddit

I remember when the ps/2 connection was introduced. The first one I saw was IBM PC Jr.

I remember the old 5 pin keyboard connector and serial mice! It was always fun playing with the IRQ's and base ports when using a mouse and modem at the same time.

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npanth@reddit

I remember when USB first came along. For a few years, I kept a ps/2 keyboard in my drawer so I could get into the BIOS. USB hadn't been implemented to accept inputs before the os loaded yet, so I still had to smash del, f10, etc from a ps/2 keyboard .

Ah, the good old days, when we could name servers after Greek gods or cartoon characters. HA

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WorkLurkerThrowaway@reddit

What’s Play Station 2 got to do with IT?

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doofusdog@reddit

The ones I used were not hot pluggable, and the students would often bend the pins all flat with a pen so they couldn't use their computer. I don't miss the sabotage part of my working life at all...

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AZSystems@reddit

Does anyone remember INT13? Hard drive sectors! 😂

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f0gax@reddit

I read that as "giggity" and to me that word has an entirely different connotation. Presuming that you meant giddy of course. If you did intend to say giggity, then so be it.

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thedrakenangel@reddit

Look up the beep codes

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Exciting-Past-7085@reddit

Ah memories...

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SkillsInPillsTrack2@reddit

when the mouse was unprecise because its ball was dirty.

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TimeBlindToneDeaf@reddit

Way back in the day, I had a Mac LCIII with several eternal devices. Daisy chaining SCSI and hoping you got it terminated correctly was... Not fun. But that 320 MB drive I had was pretty sweet, and I used that 14.4 modem to fill it up with files from my favorite BBSs until the shitty power in the house burned it out. I replaced it with a blazing fast 33.6k modem. 56k was a treat I experienced in college. Being a broke college student, I used KMart's free dial up ISP. it was free because it had a frames around your screen serving serving up ads. Way ahead of its time as far as the free with ads model.

Later, I was lucky to be in one of the first markets where home ADSL was available. Getting your phone jacks properly terminated was another adventure. You needed a little filter on every jack, so there was alot of crawling under and behind furniture to make that work. Worth it though.

Oh! While we're in the subject of old Macs, appletalk was another protocol that was everywhere. I had an old as dirt LaserJet with a network card in it and set it up so my neighbor could use it. Just drilled a small hole between our apartments and ran the rj11 cable through it and it was of to the races.

My how times have changed.

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code_monkey_wrench@reddit

I am "AT Connector" old.

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The_Wkwied@reddit

My first mouse was a PS/2 ball mouse... either it was a genuinely broken mouse or I really had no coordination (I could not even complete one of those 'draw in the circle with the mouse' games)...

Then I spent my hard earned lunch money on a $10 blue Fellowers optical USB mouse at K mart. It came with the PS2 adapter, thankfully. Best mouse I had through the dot-com burst.

Oh gods, I found it. ... That's my mouse.

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dkcyw@reddit

you mean giddy?

giggity has a super perverted connotation

gif

let's have sex

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Abject_Serve_1269@reddit (OP)

Haha yes quagmire giggly. I also said "alright" in his voice when he understood it. .but nothing sexualized.

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throwawayPzaFm@reddit

alright alright alright

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dkcyw@reddit

gif

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Shoddy-Security310@reddit

How young is your coworker?

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bobdvb@reddit

I have experienced colleagues who were born after the Millennium... I'm ancient.

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Shoddy-Security310@reddit

I mean I'm soon to be 26 and even if I didn't directly work with PS/2 I still knew what they are, how they looked and why they still exist. I'm interested if they stopped teaching young-lings about these already

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Tulpen20@reddit

A few years back, one of our campus buildings was being renovated. When it came time to put everything back, there were a bunch of interns running around, crawling under tables, plugging things in, etc.

When it came to the FAX machine, they had no clue. They said the cable wouldn't fit. Of course, they were trying to plug an RJ45 into an RJ11 jack.

I explained what they needed and what to look for. That got connected. I asked them if they had tested it.

"Uh... how?"

"Lift up the handset and listen for a dial tone"

"what's a dial tone?", was the response.

Youth, these days.....

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Jezbod@reddit

I still have a USB connected 3.5" floppy drive in my desk at work, have not used if for a few years now but they still keep finding old discs in files when they look at some of the older records.

This is for an organisation that does archaeology, environmental studies and such like stuff.

We have joined the current century and actually have a drone and qualified pilot generating far too much data!

[-]

indvs3@reddit

giggty

gif

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sharpied79@reddit

Just wait until you show him an AT style DIN keyboard connection...

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multubunu@reddit

... and an RS232 mouse, complete with 25 pin adapter for older computers that didn't have the new 9 pin connector.

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Blame33@reddit

I teach IT to high school students and my current class of year 9s love to hear about old tech. I bring in trinkets of old tech etc. and they love seeing it and talking about why it was like that and what’s replaced it

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LyokoMan95@reddit

Next you need to show him a serial mouse

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ender-_@reddit

The first mouse I had used a DE25 serial connector.

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Colossus-of-Roads@reddit

And a bus mouse which is confusing because most of them are also mini-DIN...

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xylarr@reddit

Back in university, doing computer science, we had an assignment where wrote x86 assembly to read the serial port for a mouse and move a block around on the screen. I added a draw and erase function on the left and right buttons.

1989 - simpler times.

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Abject_Serve_1269@reddit (OP)

Oh we had serial to usb cable.

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DonL314@reddit

Can you help my memory here? Could you hotplug them or did you have to reboot when switching? I seem to remember you had to do the latter ....

Also, try telling the kids "there was no internet but BBS's where you had to use your land line with a beeping device so when you were connected, nobody could call .... No texts, no video chats."

That's when my kids continue, "and you lived in a cardboard box in the middle of the motorway ...."

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ender-_@reddit

Officially PS/2 did not support hotplugging (technically the interface was a chip split in two and connected with the cable), but later motherboards made that work anyway.

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arvidsem@reddit

It depends on exactly when the hardware came out. PS/2 was hardware driven with dedicated CPU interrupts. Early versions wouldn't register the keyboard/mouse correctly except at boot.

I think that motherboards eventually included "dummy" passthrough ps/2 devices so that they were always present at boot for the processor. And that let the ports be keyboard/mouse and not dedicated to one or the other.

(I may be completely misremembering how this worked)

[-]

Bright_Arm8782@reddit

Teaching the young bloods is fun.

Amazing them with ancient spells "netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt" to fix a broken network stack is more fun.

Watching them surpass you is the best feeling ever.

[-]

mahsab@reddit

I felt old when I wanted to buy a pcie gigabit NIC in the local computer shop (they are assembling PCs also). Guy had absolutely zero idea what that is. I tried explaining but his mind could not comprehend that such a thing would exist.

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bobdvb@reddit

Many years ago I took a job teaching at a college. It was amazing to teach those kids (and a few mature students) the craft of my field (media tech) but ultimately I was over worked, under paid and under appreciated by the administration.

A year later I got head hunted back into industry. I still miss teaching and I dabble in it by doing occasional lunchtime training sessions at work for the rest of the company and by doing talks externally.

Being born in the 1900s brings us experience that some are grateful to learn from.

[-]

poleethman@reddit

Did you tell him it has a 10% chance of working?

[-]

mobileaccountuser@reddit

I'm old... using prirates bay pbs software got a date in 1986 posting on it with me 14.4 k baud modem

[-]

daneonwayne@reddit

Does no one proofread their titles?

[-]

ZedGama3@reddit

AT is the keyboard connector. As for the "mouse", that thing is just a fad and will never last. There's a serial port for it if you want to try it out.

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Shadax@reddit

My first IT gig was at a medical group nearly 20 years ago (old dude checking in).

Many nurses floated between departments and we couldn't figure out why some of the ps/2 ports were frying, and as it turns out some of them had preferable mice and keyboards they were hot swapping between machines when working different departments.

[-]

Barious_01@reddit

It is really cool how those lines became dynamic. A usb is esentilay the same thing with less end point. to think that serialized object have become one dynamic cluster is amazing. For the instance of a 23 pin ltp port comes into a com port theat hits the drivers the same way. Amazing.

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