geekhack

geekhack Community => Input Devices => Topic started by: jx4 on Fri, 22 October 2010, 18:29:13

Title: Reverse engineer PS/2 device pinout?
Post by: jx4 on Fri, 22 October 2010, 18:29:13

I want to reverse engineer the pinouts of a PS/2 device.

That is, if I have a PS/2 device and I do not know which cable should go to which pin on the PS/2 connector (that will plug into the PS/2 port of the computer), how would I go about finding this out? I suspect that I might be able to get some (or all) of that information with a multimeter? I don't know how though.

Here is a diagram of the pin outs of a PS/2 connector (although most of the readers of this forum will probably know this information already) : http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/Mouse/Keyboard_(PS/2) (http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/Mouse/Keyboard_(PS/2))

Title: Reverse engineer PS/2 device pinout?
Post by: keyb_gr on Sat, 23 October 2010, 07:00:56

Quote from: jx4;237516

That is, if I have a PS/2 device and I do not know which cable should go to which pin on the PS/2 connector (that will plug into the PS/2 port of the computer), how would I go about finding this out?

Open it up and take a look at which line goes where on the circuit board. Given some IC with known pinout, it shouldn't be too hard to identify Vdd and Gnd with continuity test. Once you have those, the rest would be Clock and Data for a keyboard, which seemingly can be reversed without anything blowing up, so you can swap those around if it doesn't work. Not sure 'bout mice.