Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Originally posted by: Steve
"Besides, USB is the much faster connection as far as packet handling, bus bandwidth and interrupt latency are concerned. This should be noticeable with a quality [mouse/keyboard]"
"USB is better - it's a modern controller on a fast chipset connection, unlike the PS/2 mouse port which is on the ancient keyboard controller, an 8-bit ISA device that needs to be polled very oftenly for smooth operation. On USB, it's smooth without eating too much into system bus bandwidth."
PS/2 ports aren't polled. They are interrupt-driven.
Originally posted by: Steve
"The PS/2 mouse port is actually the AUXiliary port of the legacy keyboard controller, the oldest and slowest piece of silicon in the entire PC. Data travelling there travels all busses all the way down to the remains of 8-bit ISA (!) maintained for the KBC alone, blocking all other system activity meanwhile. And the KBC isn't a bus mastering device either, meaning you need the CPU to poll the controller at a high frequency for smooth mouse operation.
Again, incorrect. It is interrupt-driven.
Originally posted by: Steve
USB in turn is on a chipset internal connection faster than PCI (how's that comparing to 8-bit ISA?), plus USB controllers are bus mastering, delivering data to the system as they come, no CPU activity required for fetching the data."
Wrong, USB requires CPU activity to process. It's well-known how CPU-hungry USB ports are.
Originally posted by: Steve
On top of that, the people who patented the PS/2 controller get royalties everytime a motherboard is built with it. So the sooner we can eliminate those ports and their corresponding chips, the cheaper our motherboards will become. Why do you think OEMs like Dell, HP, etc. are hardly putting them on at all anymore?
I've never heard that. It uses a standard microcontroller. Btw, what about the royalties for USB ports?