[plug] Re: Chris' XFree86 stuff and closet greenies

[Leon Brooks]

On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 18:27, Harry McNally wrote:
> I've since thought about a simple little USB to eight PS/2 port box
> (pentagonal of course) based on say the Cypress Semiconductor USB
> microcontroller and a bit of driver code to support the multiple
> keyboards and mice. This is simpler than the BTBH [0] first option
> which was a PCI card with eight ps/2 ports. Why waste a PCI slot that
> could be used for a video card (and USB will be available on any new
> m/b) ? My suspicion is that this box and ps/2 keyboards and mice will
> be cheaper than USB hub and USB keyboards. But USB would be a way to
> start the project and prove it up.

Using kernel 2.6, a few patches and the event driver interface, this is 
all relatively trivial. You can use any mixture of USB, BlueTooth, PS/2 
or serial mice and keyboards, but only the AGP card gets any kind of 
DRI. Multi-header cards like the cheap Radeons can also use MergedFB to 
drive two screens as either one or two logical screens, each with full 
DRI (unlike Xinerama which kills DRI and does odd things to video if 
you try to display it across the boundary).

Another useful keyword is "backstreet ruby".

Cheers; Leon