Worst design decisions?

Thu Sep 18 15:07:10 UTC 2003

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 up at 3.am wrote:

: Without a question:  PS/2 style keyboard and mouse connectors.  Impossible
: to tell from each other,

And this part is somewhat funny, too, because the PS/2 connector layout is
capable of having both devices share the same bus (there's two unconnected
pins, which some laptops use to provide alternate CLK/DATA signals).

If PS/2 mice used the unconnected pins rather than the same CLK/DATA pins as
the keyboard, all machines could simply have two connectors using all six
pins and you'd be able to plug either device into either socket.

A real "bus" would have been better yet, but we're talking about a spec that
came from a company bent on continuing to use simple TTL-based clocked
communications with collision detection only available by extra bus lines
(read: "bus and tag" 8-).

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv at duh.org> <tv at pobox.com>