Arduino PS2 to XT converter - link -

zinamo

24 Oct 2014, 09:40

Hello everyone,
I am new to this wonderful forum but I would like to contirbute with a small guide that I made some time ago... At the end of the summer I bought an IBM XT but I was missing the keyboard, so I looked around for a solution that was easily faisable and I discovered that it is possible to use a common PS/2 keyboard and an Arduino to emulate an XT keyboard.

I am not the creator of this project but I have made a small guide that explains how to do that with permission of the original creator of the device; as I have already published the guide on The Vintage Computer Forum, I will only publish the link:

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum ... -converter

and here is a picture of my homemade adapter built:

Image

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scottc

24 Oct 2014, 10:46

Hah, this is exactly the opposite type of converter that we usually see here! Nice work.

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Muirium
µ

24 Oct 2014, 10:54

Yup. Literally the opposite to my setup, where I use the XT keyboard with my Macs!

Image

Try to get hold of that keyboard, Zinamo. It's one of the very best ever made. Ahead of IBM's later Model Ms. And as loud as all hell. Here's one that sounds just like it (another Model F):

zinamo

24 Oct 2014, 13:52

Hello,
yes, I know that the old clicky keyboards are a whole different thing than the current low quality all-plastic keyboards :-) I have never tried one under my fingers but as I can read no one has ever been unsatisfied with an old mechanical IBM keyboard :-) in the meantime I have bought an Olivetti Keyboard 2 sold by facetsesame via this forum but I am still loking to fix the computer it was built for :-).

By the way I think that this adapter may be usefull to those that couldn't find an affordable XT keyboard but still want to use their machines.. or for someone that like me uses a KVM system fom using different PCs..
By the way, looking at the code, I think that it may be possible change it to convert an XT keyboard to PS/2 protocol.

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