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Let me first introduce myself... I'm Kent Kanja, one of the Men in Mac volunteers at the popular Accelerate Your Mac! site.
This web page outlines the steps I went through in hooking up a ps/2 keyboard and mouse to my Mac. The sections are:
- Introduction
- How This Worked (hooking up the devices)
- What I Tested
- Troubleshooting (slight problems with the setup)
- Concluding Remarks (and what I'm reviewing next...)
Introduction:
I really wanted to hook up a Logitech Cordless Desktop keyboard and wheel mouse combo to my Mac. Particularly since I knew of no wireless keyboard or wireless mouse solutions that came close to the features of this keyboard and mouse combo. Unfortunately, this particular keyboard and mouse combo was available with only ps/2 connectors - and while I had USB in just about all my Macs, I had no ps/2 in any of them... at least not until I did a little research.
Doing a bit of searching for "PS/2 to USB" yielded only a few products. The first of which I will be reviewing is the Y-Mouse Keyboard and Mouse Adapter.
The Y-Mouse Keyboard and Mouse Adapter for USB by P.I. Engineering was ready to use for all of my USB equipped Macs right out of the box. My first test system, a beige Power Macintosh G3 266 with an Entrega 4-Port USB Upgrade (PCI card), readily accepted my first test devices, a Logitech Cordless Desktop keyboard and wheel mouse combo.
How this worked:
The two ps/2 connectors (green/mouse and orange/keyboard below) of the cordless desktop and mouse connected easily to the two ps/2 connectors on the Y-Mouse adapter (see image below), in either order. I then hot-plugged the USB plug of the Y-Mouse adapter directly into one of the ports of my USB upgrade card and could immediately use both the keyboard and mouse. I also registered Alessandro Montalcini's shareware USB Overdrive to assign Control-Clicking to the 2nd mouse button and to enable the Wheel/3rd button functionality (I'd like to note at this point that use of the Logitech Cordless Desktop on a Windows PC required a software installation before the mouse would work at all). Of course even after this, not everything is perfect (see Troubleshooting below).
But the fun doesn't stop there... The non-device specific ps/2 ports of the Y-Mouse adapter allowed me to hook up two ps/2 keyboards or two ps/2 mice to my Mac just as well as it allowed me to use a single keyboard with a single mouse.
What I Tested:
Configurations I tested include:
- USB Equipped Beige Power Macintosh G3 266 (Entrega USB card)
- USB Equipped Power Macintosh 7500 w/XLR8 G3 233 (Siig USB card)
- USB Equipped Power Macintosh 7600 w/XLR8 Carrier/G3 366ZIF (Belkin USB card)
- USB Equipped Power Center Pro w/stock 604e 180 (Entrega and Siig USB cards)
- Blue & White Power Macintosh G3 350 (built-in USB)
- iMac G3 233 (Rev. A, built-in USB)
All of the USB PCI card equipped Macs used Apple's own USB Adapter Card Support 1.2 (a free download from Apple, which should work with all OHCI or "Open Host Controller Interface" compliant USB PCI cards).
Keyboards and Mice I used in my tests include:
- Dell QuietKey Keyboard
- Logitech Cordless Desktop keyboard and mouse
- Microsoft IntelliMouse (v1.1A)
- Microsoft 2-button Mouse
Troubleshooting:
Although this setup works very well, there are still problems with it - none of them are problems with the Y-Mouse Adapter, IMHO.
- Option and Command are switched on Windows keyboards.UPDATE! See Below
- There is no Power key on Windows keyboards.
 
On Windows keyboards, the Windows key is equivalent to the Command (Apple) key, and the Alt key is equivalent to the Option key. However the Alt keys are closer to the space bar than the Windows keys on Windows keyboards which could present a problem for touch typists (like myself) who are used to the Command key being closer to the space bar. Just another side note, an individual has written a key-remapper for the Microsoft Natural Keyboard (USB) which switches the Option and Command key functionality on that specific keyboard and maps the Power key functionality to the Windows Menu key. I tried it with the Y-Mouse adapter, but it didn't work for me. To find this, do a search for "MS Natural Driver" at Version Tracker.
UPDATE! A product engineer from P.I. Engineering has contacted me with information on how to swap the Alt and Command (Alt and Windows) key functionality within the Y-Mouse adapter hardware! Here is the procedure:
- Press and hold the "ESC" key on a PS/2 keyboard attached to the Y-Mouse adapter
- Press and release the "W" key on the same keyboard
- Release the "ESC" key
The Y-Mouse adapter will then swap the functionality of the two keys and save the new settings in its EEPROM (so you only need to do this once). Repeating the above procedure will return the keys to their normal functionality. (P.I. Engineering informed me that this is a feature of the Y-Mouse adapter for USB that did not make it into the version of product manual that I recieved).
Regarding the Power key situation - when the computers were ON, the Scroll-Lock key acted as the Power key to the MacOS on all the computers I used for testing. This, as well as the Windows/Alt key situation, is inherent to Apple's generic USB keyboard drivers and, as shown with the "MS Natural Driver," can probably be patched by a resourceful individual. Regarding powering the computer on, however, there is simply no way to Power on a Mac from a Windows keyboard, in my experience.
One other issue is that I didn't have the "USB Device Extension" on my Blue & White Power Macintosh G3 for some reason (possibly due to a MacOS installation oversight on my part). For anyone who's interested in using the Y-Mouse adapter, this extension (available in USB DDK 1.2, USB Adapter Card Support 1.2, or USB DDK 1.3) is required.
UPDATE! A "fresh out of the box" Powerbook G3/333 (bronze keyboard) also did not contain the "USB Device Extension." For this reason, I strongly recommend verifying that the extension is present your Extensions folder when using the Y-Mouse adapter. If it is missing you can obtain it by downloading any of the driver packages listed above.
Concluding Remarks:
I am quite impressed by the ease of use (plug-and-play) of the Y-Mouse Keyboard and Mouse Adapter for USB. To be honest, I was worried that I would first have to run some kind of configuration of my Logitech cordless mouse on a PC first, after hearing from PC using friends that a utility needed to be run first - however, all doubts were put to rest by my first attempt at just hooking everything up to a Mac without ever hooking up the keyboard/mouse combo to a PC.
This adapter is moderately priced (IMHO... retailing around $40 to $55 US, at the time of this writing), but for those with cool ps/2 keyboards and/or mice that they'd like to use on a USB equipped Mac, it works very well. I've wow'd many a Mac and PC user by simply showing them how easily various ps/2 keyboards and mice can hook up to a Mac using this adapter (and don't forget, USB is hot-swappable!).
My next review is of a similar solution from D-Link, except theirs is part of a 4-port USB hub with a serial port to boot (at the time of this writing, no promised Mac support for the serial port though =( but we'll see how that goes).
Questions? Comments? Send them to Kent Kanja.
Review Written by Kent Kanja, September 1999.
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