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PS/2 Mouse input issues

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2024 7:17 am
by Colengc
Excited to be involved. Here to report the first issue I've encountered.

I have several (retro, modern and obscure) systems connected via multiple chained KVMs (HDMI/USB). My systems with PS/2 keyboard and Mouse support (including various mods, such as Lyra for Amiga, and TransKey-II for 8-bit Atari, and whatever is in my CoCo3) have so far all worked well with the "BlackBox" USB(F) -> PS/2(M) 'active' adapter. (Easy to find on Amazon, though a bit pricy). Unfortunately, CX16 doesn't like it. Keyboard input works well so far, but mouse input appears to overload the input driver(?). If I move the mouse extremely slowly, it works, but as soon as I move it quickly, it stalls for several seconds. Since this has works well with other systems, I'm hoping the issue is something that can be easily fixed. Perhaps something related to flow control or allowing packet loss instead of trying to keep up with every one of them? I can only guess. As a coder, I'd even be interested in helping out. Or I maybe I could gift someone one of these adapters?

- Colen

Re: PS/2 Mouse input issues

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2024 11:04 am
by ahenry3068
Colengc wrote: Thu Feb 08, 2024 7:17 am Excited to be involved. Here to report the first issue I've encountered.

I have several (retro, modern and obscure) systems connected via multiple chained KVMs (HDMI/USB). My systems with PS/2 keyboard and Mouse support (including various mods, such as Lyra for Amiga, and TransKey-II for 8-bit Atari, and whatever is in my CoCo3) have so far all worked well with the "BlackBox" USB(F) -> PS/2(M) 'active' adapter. (Easy to find on Amazon, though a bit pricy). Unfortunately, CX16 doesn't like it. Keyboard input works well so far, but mouse input appears to overload the input driver(?). If I move the mouse extremely slowly, it works, but as soon as I move it quickly, it stalls for several seconds. Since this has works well with other systems, I'm hoping the issue is something that can be easily fixed. Perhaps something related to flow control or allowing packet loss instead of trying to keep up with every one of them? I can only guess. As a coder, I'd even be interested in helping out. Or I maybe I could gift someone one of these adapters?

- Colen
Hi Colen, A lot of the people doing work on the Hardware and system actually spend a lot more time on Discord then they do here. I spend time in both worlds so I dropped a link to your post to the people actually working on the SMC firmware. channel Commander-X16 --> ps2


Apparently there's been some Mice that have had this problem too. There's been some active work on the firmware and it looks like there might be a fix when R47 rom is released. You can probably get it right now if your willing to do your own build and risk flashing with experimental firmware. The best person to get advice from here is Stefan Jakobsson on Discord. He's the author of the current system updater and also one of the developers working on the firmware.

Re: PS/2 Mouse input issues

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2024 7:38 pm
by Wavicle
This is likely related to a recently addressed issue. The fix for which is available in the artifacts for pull request #29. If you have a GitHub account, you can get an SMC firmware update that may fix this from GitHub here: https://github.com/X16Community/x16-smc ... #artifacts

If you are able to do this and test with your KVM, please let us know if it works or not.