Gakalist

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Has anyone ever plugged in 2 USB keyboards into a system before? What happens? The reason I'm asking is to see if it's possible to plug in 2 of the optimus keyboards and have multiple keys set for different tasks.

Check the keyboard here

http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/

Hopefully one day it's in production...
 

chuckshissle

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Don't know about two USB2.0 keyboards but I've tried both PS/2 and USB2.0 keyboard at the same time and it works with no problem. You might wanna careful about hooking up two USB keyboard on your system. There's a risk of frying your rig, so don't even try it.
 
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Guest

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Why should there be a risk of frying your puter when hooking up two usb keboards? Makes no sense to me...
 

chuckshissle

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I don't know but again I haven't hook up two USB keyboards to a computer before. But do you really want to take a risk? But I don't get in the first place of why Gakalist want two keyboard. Maybe he has four arms or type with his feet as well. Joke.
 
Plugging 2 keyboards in a system would make sense if, for example, you want to keep a 'normal' keyboard close to the case, and a wireless one at a distance to act as a remote if the PC isin the living room and connected to the PC.

You also have more and more game-specific keyboards that are nice for this or that game, but lousy for generic use - and you may not want to plug/unplug keyboard everytime you swith app.

The worst that can happen if you plug 2 USB keyboards is that one is disabled at boot.
 

angry_ducky

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Has anyone ever plugged in 2 USB keyboards into a system before? What happens? The reason I'm asking is to see if it's possible to plug in 2 of the optimus keyboards and have multiple keys set for different tasks.

Check the keyboard here

http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/

Hopefully one day it's in production...
Me too; that's an amazing keyboard.
 

luminaris

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I've never plugged in two USB boards but, what I do is I have a wireless keyboard setup along side of my normal wired board. Go ahead and try it. I'm curious now and will try to plug a second one into my machine at home to see how that works.
 

cubber

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I have a rig setup to run MAME with a USB keyboard so I can have normal typing when I need to, and an old PS2 keyboard that's been butchered-up to be wired to two arcade joysticks and buttons mounted in a wooden box so I can beat the controllers instead of mashing keys.

Works really well, other than that some combinations of joystick angles prevents some button presses, but that's because of which keys are mapped to the directions. I'll be fixing that sometime when I get the time.
 

nogames

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Mar 27, 2006
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Has anyone ever plugged in 2 USB keyboards into a system before? What happens? The reason I'm asking is to see if it's possible to plug in 2 of the optimus keyboards and have multiple keys set for different tasks.

Check the keyboard here

http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/

Hopefully one day it's in production...

I don't see why this shouldn't work. I have two USB keyboard hooked up. One is a regular keyboard and the other is http://www.cybersnipa.com/products/csGamepad.htm FlexiGlow game keyboard, which basicly is half a keyboard
 

nogames

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Nice keypad option...

No problems with set-up?

No setup at all. No drivers, nothing. It's just like left half of a normal keyboard, so I just change the keyboard settings in the games to match the flexipad.

It works very well. Left hand on the keypad and right hand on the mouse. Works great.
 

ikaz

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I have connected 4 usb keyboards to a dell computer (messing around in work lab) did have any problem all them worked. I didn't try pressing keys on multiple keyboard at the same time to see what would happend but I doubt there were be any real problems. My goal was to run another keyboard to a co-workers Pc to mess with I just wanted to see if that was possible and it is.
 

p8ntslinger676

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i have had three hooked up to mine at once, it is fun to mess with people when they dont expect to be typing anything, they get all frieked out, they are like... "Aww wtf, gay." yes but it works fine when you use more than one.
 

Drewstre

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Apr 1, 2006
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Hiya-
I'm pretty sure attaching two USB keyboards won't hurt your box. The worst that could happen is one might not work.

However, as far as hooking up two Optimus keyboards, it's worth noting that according to the Optimus website, the drivers for the current Optimus mini three keyboard do not support more than one attached at a time, "as of now". That's the bad news.

(I'm assuming that the drivers for the full keyboard will be the same way, at least initially).

The good news: According to the same FAQ: "Optimus Configurator automatically recognizes the application and uploads images and commands for the current context." That appears to mean that the drivers can be set up to be application-specific, so their functions (and presumably the images displayed on the keys) automagically change depending on the currently running app. Is that (sorta) what you were looking for when you said you want multiple keyboards to "have multiple keys set for different tasks"?

My Macally keyboard and MS mouse do the app-specific thing. Works great. My Logitech drivers do not have application-specific settings, so I rarely use the MX700 I bought a year ago. It's relegated to my rarely used old-computer-turned-file-mule box.

Anyway, I would suppose that if they sell a metric buttload of these keyboards (and if it's priced right, they will), eventually the drivers would support more than one keyboard and all kinds of other goodies. Eventually we might see an Optimus with a RAM cache to hold images and animations? The drivers will be open source, and I'm pretty sure there are a few folks with a few ideas for a keyboard like the Optimus. So you could have, say, a big flag waving behind the keys showing what localization was currently active, programs for teaching how to type, system monitoring apps, or (dare I say it) ads on your keys [shudder]. Alls I know is I want one yesterday.

Drewstre
 

jamesemerson

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Actually, folks, I just tried it -- had one usb keyboard in and then plugged in a second usb keyboard -- and I got a plug-n-play blue screen of death error...

Rebooted. This time with both keyboards already in. When the system tried to initialize the keyboards, same thing. Blue death.

I'm running XP. Logic Controls programmable keyboards.
 

Obviously has no concept of what "frying your rig" mean. Either that or does not understand electricity.
 
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Guest

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Does anyone know if you can setup two wireless keyboards that are both logitech but different models, I am trying to set them up to play a game that requires a keyboard to type so we can play two player, but I can't get it to set up as separate individual keyboards.