Help: Hooking up an old NMB keyboard?

[Jero]

Heya everyone ,

I'm new to the Deskthority forum (only used the Wiki until now) and I gotta say this place is quite interesting .
That being said, recently I've acquired a vintage keyboard and I sort of fell in love with the switches, but the keyboard used an RJ-11 connector.

Now, silly me thought 'the pin-out on the pcb seems similar to that of a PS/2 connector so might as well cut off the RJ-11 connector and tie the wires up to the corresponding PS/2 wires'. So after doing that I plugged it into a modern pc but nothing happened.

It was only then when I realized that I also have a Kaypro 2x and another vintage pc laying around which still work and which also use RJ-11 for the keyboard I believe, so I should have tested it first ..

I would love to hook it up to my pc through PS/2, but I really don't know if it is even possible with the pin-out and all.
So before I go and try to hook it back up again I would appreciate it to read your thoughts on the possibilities.
In the mean time I'm going to try and get a new RJ-11 connector on it so I can test it.

Photos of the keyboard below.

Key caps removed:

Spoiler:

Top shell removed:

Spoiler:

Pin-out:

Spoiler:

[Muirium]

Space invaders: nice! I like those a lot. What I'd do, if I were you, is try Soarer's Converter with your board. It can speak several protocols (the language the keyboard sends over the wires, rather than just the shape of the connector) and gives you lots of power to remap things as you like. That way you can move into the 1990s and hook it up to anything with USB!

[fohat]

That is indeed awesome. I had a 122-key Hi-Tek clicky black keyboard that I bought for parts but could not bring myself to strip it, so I sold it intact.

It is particularly nice of them to label the pin connections on the PCB!

I see that pesky "reset" pin and wonder whether this is one of those keyboards, like the Leading Edge 2014, that needs that 5th pin connected to the Teensy (most don't).

But, I am not the man to ask since I have never done it.

[XMIT]

Welcome Jero! I'd like to know how you found so many Model Fs as you mentioned in your other post.

This:

It was only then when I realized that I also have a Kaypro 2x and another vintage pc laying around which still work and which also use RJ-11 for the keyboard I believe, so I should have tested it first ..

Bad idea. RJ11 and RJ10 and similar phone jack keyboard connectors are not standardized. This is a great way to ruin a board when it sees power on the ground line and ground on the power line.

You can certainly get this board working, it was more than likely a PC AT board. Look into Soarer's Converter or TMK.

As fohat said some boards require that Reset line to be toggled on power on for the board to work correctly. Again, most don't require this but some do.

Good luck!

[Jero]

Thanks for all the help so far .
I'm looking into buying a Teensy for the NMB and some pre-made Soarers for the din 5 keybaords (here a Teensy is almost as expensive as a pre-made Soarer ). At first glance it seems pretty straight forward in terms of hooking it up.
Is there any programming required or can I just 'hook up the wires and go' so to speak?

As for how I got hold of the Model F's, I got them from a local auction together with 3 IBM systems and one other system which I have yet to identify. I'll make a separate post showing all the items if there's demand for it.

I feel like writing today so if you want you can read the extended version about how I got into vintage hardware and the auction below under the spoiler .

Spoiler:

So for a while now I've been watching Tek Syndicate, a video series about technology, and one of the members, Wendell, mentioned in a couple of videos that he loves his IBM Model M and that it's amazing etc.

Out of curiosity and given that I'm looking for a new keyboard (currently using a Cooler Master Devastator board..)
I figured let's look into this keyboard, see what Wendell's praise is all about. After checking it out I also found out about the Model F which interested me a bit more, and during the period when I was looking into these boards I was occasionally checking out a local auction website dedicated to bankrupt companies putting their stuff up for auction.
I had acquired a couple of items from the auction house before without any issues so I trust it.

Every now and then I would search for the term IT and usually a load of low spec thin clients/office pc's would come up and some networking equipment. Then one day, coincidentally, I saw an auction listed named 'Vintage IT'.
I didn't think much of it at first as the thumbnail only showed something which looked like a bunch of crt monitors, but it kept showing up so eventually I decided to check it out.

After opening the photos it showed there were a bunch of keyboards there as well which got cropped out in the thumbnail (a lesson was learned, don't trust thumbnails). Some of the boards looked a lot like Model F terminal boards. Unfortunately though the photos weren't very clear and the description said nothing other than 'monitors and keyboards from various brands'.

The photo's weren't sharp enough to determine the brand of the keyboards or any serial numbers, but I could make out that the logos on the keyboards were on the same spot as the logos on the Model F terminal boards.
Also the 'CRT's' showed IBM branding.

After searching for IBM crt's and not finding much I figured they were probably computer systems, so I thought there had to be at least some IBM branded keyboards in there as well. Eventually I placed the first bid, and for a while I was the highest bidder, until the last couple of hours that was.

In the last hours people started bidding like crazy. I was at work while the auction was ending. It uses this system to give all participants equal chances by extending an auction with 5 minutes if someone bids in the final 5 minutes and so people were playing tricks on each other, overbidding in the 5th minute or the last 15 seconds.

As bids had risen past 150 euros my mind started trying to reason with me and I was pacing through the room out of nervousness. 'Is it going to be worth it?', 'Think of all the other things you can buy with that money, or just save it?',
'This is ridiculous, I don't even know for certain if there are any ibm boards in there', 'But if I pass this up and there are IBM boards in there I probably won't get another chance like this' kind of thoughts were going through my head.

Eventually I decided to go through with it and so I won the auction for my first vintage hardware .
Last week a pallet of IT goodness got delivered. I left work earlier so I could unpack it all.
Never was I so excited for ‘new’ hardware haha.

So far I feel I like I've got my money's worth even though I don't even know if any of the boards work.
Just having such old computer hardware is nice, it has something to it.
If I can only get the NMB board to work I'm already going to be really happy .

[XMIT]

Yes, there is demand for seeing the Fs.

Where is "here" for you? Consider adding your country of residence to your profile.

The Teensy is overpriced for what you want to do. Consider a "Pro Micro" knockoff board on eBay. They're around 6 USD each shipped from China. I'm using a couple for protocol conversion here.

Good luck!

[Jero]

Alright, I'll better get to cleaning them then. Come to think of it of course there's demand for it.. silly me.
Some of them are quite dirty as they've probably been sitting in storage for quite a while.

By here I mean in The Netherlands. I should have been more precise on that.
I'll have a look into a Pro Micro, thanks .

[Muirium]

By all means try a Pro Micro. But a word of warning: I had to pull mine out and replace it with a Teensy because the thing got flaky. Keyboards are damn useless if they fall anywhere short of 100% reliability. Drive me nuts! But Teensies never fail on me.

Floris is your local source. They're also nicer to work with when installing Soarer.

[XMIT]

It would be good to understand and root cause that flakiness. Could be any of a number of things. Ah well. This is one reason I prefer my converters to be outside the keyboard case.

Yeah, I can just imagine the awfulness of a flaky keyboard that decides to send an Enter keycode at the wrong time when typing something like this:

Code: Select all

# rm -rf /tmp/some-file

That would be awful. Though, I always preface sensitive commands with '#' just in case.

[chzel]

It would be good to understand and root cause that flakiness. Could be any of a number of things.

It is most probably the dirt cheap quality. We are not talking about official boards (they cost about the same as a teensy) but Chinese clones made for minimum cost. (And I am not really sure if the MCU's are indeed Atmel made.)

[andrewjoy]

It would be good to understand and root cause that flakiness. Could be any of a number of things. Ah well. This is one reason I prefer my converters to be outside the keyboard case.

Yeah, I can just imagine the awfulness of a flaky keyboard that decides to send an Enter keycode at the wrong time when typing something like this:

Code: Select all

# rm -rf /tmp/some-file

That would be awful. Though, I always preface sensitive commands with '#' just in case.

I red somewhere that rm -rf was suppressed with certain folders nowadays so you cannot delete the whole root directory.

no more deleting everything in /

[XMIT]

This all depends on the exact rm(1) binary on your system. More recent versions of GNU Coreutils rm will require the "--no-preserve-root" option to remove things starting with the root directory.

Still, though, removing all of /usr or /home would be unfortunate. GNU Coreutils RM does not offer protection against these scenarios. Also, older systems (which are all too common) may not offer this flag. Some systems, particuarly non-GNU systems, will either wrap rm(1) with some other script, or offer a different binary.

For further details on the GNU Coreutils version see https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ ... invocation.

[Muirium]

Yeah, that or misspelling far more important things: arrrse!

Anyway, my actual problem with the Pro Micro was whether the bloody thing would power up at all. Here's the details, all fixed by tearing it out and popping in a Teensy 2 instead.

http://deskthority.net/post215337.html#p215337

A Model F is not a keyboard to mess with. They're rock solid, and deserve similar mods.

[andrewjoy]

for a model F just nip it in the bud and replace the controller , your future self from 2045 will thank you.

[Muirium]

The original controller's rock solid. Just like the Teensy. The only day I'm replacing that is when there's a nice drop in Bluetooth controller available for Model Fs. At this rate, USB will be obsolete before these keyboards!

[Jero]

After some fiddling around with a Teensy 2.0 and reading some tutorials I managed to get it working with the NMB board .

Not all the keys are detected by Windows however (like the Cmd13 to 24 keys) but I read that Soarer's converter supports key remapping so I'm going to look into that.

For now I've ordered another Teensy, some soldering wire and some mini usb cables so that I can put the Teensy inside the keyboard to have it all neatly hooked up.

I'm also trying to get a knock-off Leonardo board from china but for some reason Paypal keeps asking for a credit card which I don't have .

Now the last thing I need to do is determine the pin-out on the model f boards which have a rj-10 or 11 connector.

[seebart]

Nice Jero! That's one hell of a Space invader battleship you got yourself there! Quite rare IMO.

[andrewjoy]

Good news this gives me hope with my space invader

http://coronthica.com/by-uuid/3f83a38c- ... 39950ab6c/

It has the best bottom row ever !

[Jero]

Nice Jero! That's one hell of a Space invader battleship you got yourself there! Quite rare IMO.

Thanks ^^. I also think it's rare given how little I can find about it on the web. It sure takes up a lot of space on my desk, though the ibm model F boards are bigger I think.


I was so glad when I got it working, because inside the bottom half of the shell, underneath the pcb there was evidence of a little pool of dried up liquid (looked a bit like coffee) and a couple of soldering points above that spot were notably dirtier than the others so I was afraid it had shorted or something but all seems fine so far .

Good news this gives me hope with my space invader

http://coronthica.com/by-uuid/3f83a38c- ... 39950ab6c/

It has the best bottom row ever !

That bottom row is quite nice indeed . Nice long left shift button as well! My nmb board has a really tiny left shift and a nice long right shift which I'll never ever use . However personally I would prefer to have a Windows key for locking the pc, though now that I come to think of it I'm sure that function can be assigned to other keys either with the converter or through software so it's not that big of a deal actually.

I really like the design of your keyboard as well! So clean .
That white space invader looks pretty mean though :p. I've noticed whilst cleaning the nmb board that it has both the aggressive and the more harmless looking switches. I wonder if there's a reason for that or if it's just randomized for no reason. I hope your board also has the pin-out written on the pcb, I wish all keyboard manufacturers would do/had done that. In case it's of any worth, I did hook up the Reset wire to the Teensy. I wonder what it's for though?

As for the Leonardo board I couldn't buy because of Paypal, turns out Paypal continues to ask for a credit card if there aren't enough funds on the account.. oops . Eventually I decided to buy a knock-off Pro Micro board because of the size. Gonna have to wait probably a week until I can give it a shot, but another Teensy is on it's way so I can work on another board in the meantime .