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USB keyboard lag in DOS games

S

Simke

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Joined
Sep 1, 2013
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34
Location
Brisbane, Australia
Recently I got my hands on old Dell Optiplex PC (P4, not exactly vintage, but good enough as a tweener machine). I've set up multi boot with DOS 6.22, NT4, Win 2000 and XP - all of them work fine (and Dell even has network card driver for DOS for download for this machine).

The only issue I've come across so far is the keyboard input lag in DOS games (no issues in DOS itself otherwise, or Win 3.11 which I also installed). So far I've tried Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, but they are unplayable via keyboard. If I set mouse as input device in Wolfenstein, it works fine without a lag. Doom "demo" that plays itself on start runs fine, no lag there, but keyboard input is very slow (in menu and in game).

Unfortunately this machine doesn't have PS/2 ports. Is there anything I can do to fix this? I'm assuming that getting a USB to PS/2 converter (I have PS/2 keyboard and mouse) probably won't help (since it still goes over USB), or should I try this? I can get a cheap converter from local electronics store. Any ideas are appreciated.

Thanks
 
While I don't have much experience with this. I can say that using an adapter probably won't work, if it was the other way around. Then it might work. Are you using a wireless keyboard or wired? Other things to check is to try another keyboard just to make sure. I also checked online and saw that the wrong bios settings can cause a problem. Check your bios and make sure USB legacy support is on, it probably is but just check to make sure, It also said to set the IRQ's as well. Other than that, the main issues are the fact that dos was being fazed out as the main OS at the time USB was being introduced. So they did not do much development for it to support usb. I hope this helps.
 
I have several Dell machines of that era and they have motherboard headers for a dual PS/2 (mouse and keyboard) and a serial port ribbon connector. In fact I've taken the ribbon/ports assembly from a Dell where it wasn't needed and sometimes use it on another Dell that only has USB ports since it has that same (although previously unused) header on it. This allows me to use both PS/2 devices where previously only USB was possible. It's a 22 pin dual row header near the edge of the motherboard..
 
dassark said:
While I don't have much experience with this. I can say that using an adapter probably won't work, if it was the other way around. Then it might work. Are you using a wireless keyboard or wired? Other things to check is to try another keyboard just to make sure. I also checked online and saw that the wrong bios settings can cause a problem. Check your bios and make sure USB legacy support is on, it probably is but just check to make sure, It also said to set the IRQ's as well. Other than that, the main issues are the fact that dos was being fazed out as the main OS at the time USB was being introduced. So they did not do much development for it to support usb. I hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll check bios settings for legacy support. Haven't had much time to play with this machine in the last couple of weeks, but I'll try some more games and see if they have the same issue. DOS programs such as Norton Commander, MS Word, etc work fine without any keyboard/mouse lag.

Keyboard and mouse are wired, I'll see if I can find another keyboard to test.
 
Does it have PS/2 ports? If so I'd try that. Even my modern PC with Windows 7 on it has PS/2 ports.
 
My Dell GX620 has PS/2 connectors that are available only via optional accessory card that includes 9-pin serial which is what I had mentioned earlier.
 
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