[WinMac] Re: One Keyboard/Mouse with 3 OSs
Craig Puetz(puetz[at]cedarnet.org)
Fri, 11 Jun 1999 22:00:29 -0500
USB devices (at least human interface devices, like keyboards and mice)
almost all (all that I know of) support the HID Boot protocal, so they
should work fine. There is a generic USB driver for MacOS called USB
Overdrive ($25 shareware I think) that will match any equipment it can
(joysticks, keyboards, and mice at the moment, w/ suppot for wheel mice,
throttle sliders, etc) - I assume Windows driver will not be too difficult
to find, and in fact none should be necessary. Win98 should already have
support as the protocols are generic for these common devices (though not
for more complex beasts like printers).
In Linux, support is a little tougher. Linux/PPC (which seems to be what
you will be interested in) has USB support for keyboards and mice,
including 3-button mice, or the wheel 'click' of a wheel mouse, though not
the wheel itself (to my knowledge). This has been specially patched/fixed
into the test kernels that are currently available for blue & white G3's,
and should be working 'out-of-box' soon in the stable 2.2.x tree (though
currently the 2.2.x USB driver is broken in Linus's mainline kernels). This
USB driver does work (I'm told, anyway) reliably on i386, if you have a
UHCI controller (basically, the one built into the Intel motherboard
chipset). The OHCI chipsets, which basically everyone else (card
manufacturers, Apple, etc) use don't work as well (at all?), except in the
older uusbd stack, which is the one patched into the G3 b&w kernel or can
be patched in semi-by-hand on i386.
Bottom line - stick to name-brand USB stuff, and it should be possible to
get the keyboard and 3-button mouse (or wheel mouse) to work on all three
OS's w/o much difficulty. If you are planning to use linux on Intel, be
prepared to have to build your own kernel up from source if the machine
already has onboard USB, or to need to patch in USB support from a
non-merged project if it has a card. Because of the iMac and G3 B&W USB
support is somewhat more mature, and definately easier to find in
precompiled kernels, in Linux/PPC, but the codebase exists reliably for
most all Linux platforms where it would make sense.
Sorry - this got a little long-winded. Reply if I just confused you with
too much detail. Bottom bottom line - no problem, it can be done.
>Subject: One Keyboard/Mouse with 3 OSs
>From: Casey Jaymes <casey_jaymes@iname.com>
>Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 23:35:12 -0400
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
>
>Here's a problem that I'm dealing with. I'm getting a blue & white g3
>with the mitsubishi 900u monitor with plans to add a second box that
>runs primarily linux, but also window. The 900u has two ports so the
>boxes can share usb peripherals connected to the monitor, but what
>mouse keyboard can I get that will work with both Mac and Windows
>(and hopefully Linux)?
>
>I'm aware that Linux isn't too usb friendly at the moment. I'm also
>assuming that Windows doesn't have a generic usb keyboard/mouse
>driver so I could use the mac perphs.
>
>Casey Jaymes
> _________________________________________________________
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Craig Puetz
puetz@cedarnet.org
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