Submitted 11 months ago by Starglasses@lemmy.blahaj.zone to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
The keyboard will connect to the computer, so can’t the mouse piggy back on that wire by plugging in through the keyboard?
Every Mac USB keyboard has two usb ports for the mouse, one on either side. This has been true for for like 20 years. Bluetooth kinda put an end to that for the most part, but it’s still present on the wired keyboards if you opt for one.
And prior to that they had two ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) ports on either side. Very handy.
During the PS-2 era Apple was using the very similar ADB plug for input devices. It was standard on Macs of the era to have ADB passthrough on the keyboards. I can’t even recall any old Macs having two ADB ports.
When they switched to USB the passthrough came with it.
I don’t recall ever seeing PS-2 passthrough, as standard.
Ok so I am so unknowledgable about keyboards! They exist all over the place. How cool :D Guess that could’ve been a google >.>
Googling everything gets boring though. I learned something today from your question :)
I think the more interesting question is why you wouldn't want it, and why it's a standard. Which I think has to do with flexibility, honestly. I use my keyboard on a different surface than my mouse often, and you need your mouse wire to have a surprising amount of lack and a consistent direction towards the back of your table, otherwise you get weird pulls on it and it's more annoying to use.
The reason is probably that it costs slightly more to add an extra USB hub controller to a keyboard. Margins aren’t that great when it comes to keyboards (at the low end of the market), so unless you’re Apple you’re going to try to be cheaper than the competition.
And here I thought that was the standard setup for everyone…
I have a keyboard that supposedly does this. It has never actually worked as advertised.
Mine is
I guess they could if the keyboard had a usb port that wasn’t just power…
what kind of usb passthrough doesn’t do data?
Shit ones.
There’s no reason you can’t do that. You can buy keyboards with a USB hub and attach a mouse, I had a system maybe 15 years ago setup like that.
Some external keyboards have usb slots built in that you can plug a mouse into.
Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Sure, many keyboards have a usb port that you can use. People tend to prefer leaving those ports open for temporary devices though (like a thumb drive) and instead plug the keyboard+mouse into the harder to reach ports on the back of the computer as they likely won’t need to move those often.
ours@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I plug my wireless mouse’s dongle on my keyboard USB port. I figure it’s the USB port that sits the closest to the mouse so least chance of interference (not that it’s ever been a problem but hey).
brianorca@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Interference is a legit issue, especially if there is an active USB3 port near the mouse dongle. This is because USB3 specifically does create some mild interference near the 2.4GHz range used by the wireless mouse. The back ports of the motherboard also sit with the metal box between the dongle and the mouse, blocking some of the signal. Using a box-front port, or a keyboard port as your did, helps separate the dongle from potential interference sources.