Can two USB keyboards be connected at once?

U

undertheradar

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 26, 2004
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Can you buy two USB style keyboards and use them both at the same time on the same computer? Has anyone tried this/know what will happen?

My goal is to use one keyboard for each hand. There are split/tented/vertical keyboards out there, but they dont seem to have a key design that I really like, so I would like to use two keyboards that I do like (provided they are USB), one for each hand mounted vertical, and then I can simply ignore the upper half on each board that the other hand uses (or, if I need to type one-handed for some reason, I can still do that).

Will this create some internal conflict or reduce the total number of keys or split the total number of keys that I can press in some way? Are there some safeguards built into a computer to prevent this (so I couldn't say, press the left and right arrow keys at once and cause my computer to catch fire).
 
Should be no problem ata ll. I've had a ps/2 and usb keyboard attached at the same time without issues, and USB is newer tech; no reason why it wouldn't work. The only problem, if any, would be if there was a limit on simultaneous keypresses or something...But yeah, even some custom game controllers use a usb keyboard encoder (e.g. for programming keystrokes into buttons or direction switches)
 
undertheradar said:
(or, if I need to type one-handed for some reason, I can still do that).
Click to expand...

Why would you ever need to type one.....oh.....nevermind. :p

Yeah, it works just fine. I just plugged in an extra for kicks, and it didn't see any issues.
 
shouldnt be a problem. i have a wired and a wireless set of input devices attached to my machine via usb without issue.
 
I can guarantee you that it'll work, I have a g15 and a saitek eclipse 2 plugged in once to test it out. Not only that it also works when i have my saitek plugged into the g15 which was already connected to the pc
 
Yes it is fine. It wont break any thing.

In fact I currently have 3 USB keyboards attached to my laptop. The keyboard of the laptop is one, an external usb keyboard is the second, and the third is a usb device that I have programmed to enumerate and behave like a keyboard.
 
Cool, thanks guys. Now I can make a tie-fighter board with a couple cheapo USB boards rather than pay $100-200. My main concern was that one might boot and the other might not.
 
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