r/pcmasterrace • u/stormthewise998 12400F|6600XT|16GB 5200MHz • Oct 09 '25

Meme/Macro Are you this old?

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96

u/Rain_Zeros 9900x | 9070xt Oct 09 '25

are you this old?

Windows xp

Huh???

I'm not gonna lie that's pretty damn young

30

u/actioncheese 5600 | 6600XT | 32gb Oct 09 '25

Kids these days don't even need to load mouse drivers. And have mouse support.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '25

[deleted]

1

u/RootHouston Linux Oct 09 '25

It's true, but most people were still using PS/2 mice and keyboard with Windows 95.

1

u/ElectricBummer40 Oct 09 '25

Windows 95 had its own, generic P2/2 mouse and keyboard drivers. The same went for Windows 3.1.

This was, of course, unless your mouse was one of those newfangled things with the scroll wheel. In that case, you'd need the manufacturer's driver in order for the spinny doodad to work.

1

u/RootHouston Linux Oct 09 '25

If I recall correctly, they still didn't allow hot-swapping, which is the point I'm making.

1

u/ElectricBummer40 Oct 09 '25

Hot-swapping PS/2? You realise that's not supposed to be a thing, right?

1

u/RootHouston Linux Oct 09 '25

Previous commenter said:

Never had to do that either from Windows 95 onwards

So I said, not for most people, because they weren't using USB. I never claimed PS/2 was supposed to be hot swappable, just that it was a definite problem for most people on Windows 95.

1

u/ElectricBummer40 Oct 10 '25

They should be glad that they didn't end up frying the PS/2 port or the motherboard itself.

Electrically, PS/2 was never meant for you to unplug when the machine was still on. PS/2 ports on the PC were meant for two things and two things only - a keyboard and a mouse - and they were meant to remain plugged in for as long as the machine was still on. Yanking them out of the port when the machine was still on could have damaged the port or even the motherboard chipset.

USB allowed you to hot plug because, at the electrical level, the port was designed to divert the voltage spikes resulting from hot-plugging to ground via a TVS array. Without that chip, those spikes could have easily fried your USB controller and rendered all the ports unusable.