HIDman Adapting USB devices to work on old computers | Hacker News Reader

HIDman Adapting USB devices to work on old computers

github.com

133 pointsCTOSian32 comments

> Simply open a text editor on your target PC (eg notepad, edit, vi), then hold HIDman's power button for a few seconds. The menu will be typed out into your text editor.

That's very cool and clever.

That's mindblowing to me.

Reclaiming the serial terminal in a USB way.

It could have modes for Notepad, vim, and plain vt100 compatible :-)

It alao makes for a really cool out of band communication path. Pondering what this coupled with WiFi could do.

I vaguely remember playing with some physical keylogger (ps/2?) back in early 2000s that had similar feature - to configure it you enter some magic key sequence then it „typed” the menu and you execute some configuration commands via typing on a keyboard.

I saw that on a super-deluxe early PS/2 to USB converter (PI Engineering Y-Mouse)

I did something similar using Raspberry Pi 2040 - it pretends to be a USB keyboard, opens browser using 0xf0 key, types in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ and press play after connecting to the PC.

https://github.com/EddieTheHead/RPIPicoRickRoll

I'm guessing this was killed because of the rick roll (heads up in case you click the youtube link before reading the repo name, the youtube link above is a rickroll) but I vouched for it because the linked github repo is genuinely very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

His YouTube channel is awesome!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBsv-jRiIT8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=putHMSzu5og

https://www.youtube.com/@TheRasteri

You know this will end up in some power plant or military facility to get another 30 years out of something that works and no one wants to deal with. Very cool project.

USB to PS2/serial adapters and converters have existed for decades though.

Those typically aren’t what they seem. They are dumb socket wiring adapters and the peripheral itself needs to support both usb and ps2 for it work. Those peripherals are really rare now (they were around for the usb changeover).

While there are passive adapters for late model PS2 keyboards, there are also cheap active adapters utilising the CEC CSC0101A.

https://www.micros.com.pl/mediaserver/info-uicsc0101a-s16.pd...

But they are not as compatible as the open source one being developed.

Edit: I got it the wrong way around, see wolrah below.

> there are also cheap active adapters utilising the CEC CSC0101A

"The CEC CSC0101A is an integral micro-controller for converting PS/2 interface signal to USB applications"

That's the other way around, for which adapters have been widely available since the dawn of USB.

Adapters like the subject of this thread allowing modern USB HIDs to be connected to older computers are much harder to find. I remember at one point seeing one advertised in a CDW catalog, but just that statement alone should date it.

I indeed got it the wrong way around!

There are active adapters around: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Active_USB_to_PS2_Ad...

But they aren't cheap. I hope open-source projects like this one will result in them being cheaply available on AliExpress and the like.

No, there are active adapters as well.

I use to be into RC flight. Back then, the controllers could plug into a PC via a serial port. I had to buy an active adapter to use it since I didn't have a PC with a serial port, anymore.

Note the above is going from usb peripheral to serial port on the pc with no drivers.

USB to serial adapter are a dime a dozen but they do the opposite of this. The usb side is on the pc which has drivers to handle a lot of the complexity.

Man to go off topic I remember the days when USB was new and all those USB keyboards never seemed to work right “at boot”. Sure they worked okay once you got into windows but the BIOS didn’t seem to accept them.

For a few years the most reliable way to use a USB keyboard was through a PS/2 adapter that plugged into the motherboard. I remember there was quite some time where USB keyboards came with PS/2 adapters and sometimes even a pigtail to go to whatever that bigger round jack was called (a DIN connector?)

> Hub support can be hit-and-miss. This is (mostly) not HIDman's fault - many modern hubs don't support low-speed USB devices properly.

Just... how? USB hubs have been around for > 2 decades, the IP cores for USB 1 used in hub chips should have stabilized long ago...

Pretty much every single USB device ever created fails some part or another of the USB spec. Because the spec is enormous, truly giant, and ambiguous in parts.

I guess using a hub for a keyboard is a little more niche.

Heh funny I have a laptop connected to the USB hub in a relatively recent Fujitsu screen and then an old USB 2.0 hub connected to that one with keyboard and mouse connected to it. Works flawlessly. Guess I got lucky.

I would have assumed that connecting your PC to a hub built-in to your monitor then connecting keyboard and mice into the monitor would be a somewhat common configuration

I would guess hubs built into monitors to be tested with this exact use-case.

I don't know; I tried this once (on a Dell U2715H), and the input from both the mouse and the keyboard got very jittery, to the point of making the computer very difficult to operate. I suppose there was some interference from processing and displaying HDMI signal; whatever it was, I decided not to bother with built-in display USB hubs.

Most of my computing life the last decade is living off a laptop hooked up to a dock and a dinky little 4port usb2.0 hub plugged into that dock for webcam, mouse, keyboard, midi controller. It's pretty nice to just one cable my laptop into a desktop.

Huh. I use a hub as a cheap KVM equivalent, and noticed that every now and again the keyboard just fails to work until replugged. Guess this is a bit more widespread, but you'd thought they'd test with keyboards.

I use Pico PS2 from here https://github.com/No0ne/ps2x2pico and the related PiKVM integration. The hardware setup is much simpler: just a pico and a signal level converter.

Hopefully something like this will be adapted for Atari Joystick Port.

The existing solutions for that are proprietary hardware or firmware.

Now, if only this supported ADB too...

There’s a list of projects at the end of this article:

https://paperstack.com/adb_usb_converter/

The ADB-USB Wombat is a pretty decent solution if you prefer to buy something already made.

The usb4vc supports ADB [1].

I have one for my Macintosh 512ke and it works great for the non-adb mouse and keyboard.

I choose it over the HIDman since you can buy it assembled and it works with a RaspberryPi 3.

1. https://github.com/dekuNukem/USB4VC?tab=readme-ov-file#apple...

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