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USB keyboard - lag

PostPosted: Fri Jul 28, 2023 12:44 am
by Serg2140
Hey Bret! I want to tell you that I was impressed with your work, because I did not know that you could get so many different usb devices to work under MS-DOS. I was impressed, really.

Maybe you can help me solve one problem. I have a ThinkPad 600 laptop. It has one USB port (UHCI) to which I plugged in a USB keyboard. Installed pure MS-DOS 6.22 (w/o Windows). After launching USBUHCI.COM and USBKEYB.COM, the keyboard works but has a lag. The keyboard is the most common, wired, without multimedia. There are no parameters in the BIOS of the laptop and in the configuration program for setting up USB. If you connect to a USB flash drive, it works at normal (for USB 1.1) speed.
Tell me, please, maybe there are some parameters for the USBKEYB.COM program that allow you to eliminate the lag?

Re: USB keyboard - lag

PostPosted: Sun Jul 30, 2023 9:03 am
by Bret
When you say "lag", are you referring to the time between when you press the key and the first character appearing on the screen, or the time between the first character and the rest of the characters if you hold the key down for a long time?

Re: USB keyboard - lag

PostPosted: Sun Jul 30, 2023 6:55 pm
by Serg2140
When I press a key, the character on the screen appears with a delay. If I press the key and hold it, then the characters appear on the screen (with a delay), and then the laptop speaker is activated and it starts to squeak. (I'm assuming a buffer overflow).

Re: USB keyboard - lag

PostPosted: Mon Jul 31, 2023 3:34 pm
by Bret
There is nothing in the settings that will directly control the lag -- I've not seen that problem before. But there are a couple of things you can try.

The first would be to experiment with the different typing methods in USBKEYB (the /M:# option, where # is a number between 1 and 3). USBKEYB normally is able to configure this automatically, but for some reason the detection method may not work correctly.

The other thing would be to replace your keyboard BIOS with a new one. The easiest way to do do this is to install the Microsoft KEYB program. Note that it MUST be the one from MS and not any of the others (like FreeDOS). None of the others actually replace the entire keyboard BIOS the way MS does. I can send you a copy of that if you don't already have one.

Re: USB keyboard - lag

PostPosted: Mon Jul 31, 2023 9:53 pm
by Serg2140
Thanks for your advice, Bret!

The advice to replace the BIOS of the keyboard turned out to be unsuccessful. I tried to run the KEYB.COM program, but it did not give any effect, the behavior of the keyboard when pressing a key did not change.

Next, I started trying various USBKEYB typing methods (the /M: option). The number 1 had no effect, the number 2 caused the laptop to freeze. The number 3 was lucky for me - the keyboard worked quickly and clearly!

Thank you Bret, you are the best!

There was only one problem left. Now the Ctrl-Alt-Del combination to restart the laptop does not work. When I press this combination (on any of the keyboards), the laptop freezes. The /Reboot:Y\N key has no effect. Maybe there is some solution to this problem?

Re: USB keyboard - lag

PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2023 5:26 am
by Bret
Have you tried the combination of both the KEYB program and Method 3? I don't know if that will fix the problem or not, but maybe worth a try (if you haven't tried it yet). Other than that I'm not sure what else can be done.

Re: USB keyboard - lag

PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2023 8:29 pm
by Serg2140
Bret, you are a genius!
After launching KEYB.COM, the Ctrl-Alt-Del combination works, the laptop can be restarted! Now my USB keyboard works perfectly!

Thank you very much for your help and respect for the driver!

Re: USB keyboard - lag

PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2024 12:35 pm
by Nisse
Serg2140 wrote:When I press a key, the character on the screen appears with a delay. If I press the key and hold it, then the characters appear on the screen (with a delay), and then the laptop speaker is activated and it starts to squeak. (I'm assuming a buffer overflow).

That happens to me to after a few beers :P ;)