USB keyboards vs. PS2 keyboards: more than 3 simultaneous keys?

[magellan]

On my PS2 keyboards if I press more than 3 keys simultaneously I get a beep but nothing else. Do USB keyboards have this same limitation?

 

[EarthDog]

Depends on the keyboard, not the input, as to how many keys you can press at once.

 

[Janus67]

Depends on the keyboard, not the input, as to how many keys you can press at once.

Bingo. Many high quality keyboards allow you to press all of the keys at once. That's generally more common over ps2. Most decent to good usb keyboards accept around 6 keys at once.

 

[Dlaw]

Bingo. Many high quality keyboards allow you to press all of the keys at once. That's generally more common over ps2. Most decent to good usb keyboards accept around 6 keys at once.

I've found the opposite, actually. In my experience, PS/2 keyboards are more limited than USB in terms of how many keys can be pressed at once. Even the cheap Onn keyboard I have sitting in the corner for client systems supports up to 20 simultaneous key presses.

Just about any keyboard from Logitech, Microsoft or any of the "gaming" brands will support multiple simultaneous key strokes.

 

[NiHaoMike]

It's all about the design of the key matrix. The cheap ones are direct matrixed and have restrictions on how many keys can be registered, while the good ones will have diodes that would theoretically allow all the keys to be individually registered.

 

[HankB]

When I was looking at keyboards it seemed like all USB keyboards had 3-key rollover whereas the PS/2 keyboards had N-key rollover. My DAS Keyboard has that depending on which interface is in use.