I just recently bought this ATEX keyboard on ebay, you might have seen it I guess. I did not pay the full hefty price for it, only half hefty. ^^ I guess it is my first TKL board, although I guess it must be a battleship TKL. As far as I know these where used at newspaper agencies only, quite probably with a propitiatory protocol, although the connector is standard 9-pin serial.
I got it now and I must say, it is in a pristine condition at least for its age. Its like its been stored in a box somewhere dry and nice since it was made in December of 1979. All of the switches are smooth, clean and really nice. They are a bit on the heavy side, but that's not exactly a surprise looking at the switch specs.
The first switch I pressed when I unpacked it was at the far right, and it was scratchy as hell, and i got quite scared. It was just the assembly plate that was shifted to the right so the low end of the right keycaps rubbed somewhat at the casing. This was an easy fix of course. 6 screws are holding the assembly plate and then you can move the assembly quite several mm side to side.
Do anyone know if there is some way to convert this serial connection to USB (or XT/AT/PS2 for that matter)
I guess there is a lot of serial to USB converters around, maybe for industrial purposes. If any of these are programmable that might be an option.
I am on thin ice here, but can a Soarer's converter or similar handle or be programmed to handle a different/unknown protocol? AT/XT is also serial, but the protocol is of course different, and the voltage might be too. There are 4 wires going to the 9-pin connector so it should be a simple serial signal.
Yeah the original price was a bit much, but I dont think it was too bad at the price I gave. There cant be many boards in this condition around. And I have no way of stumbling over anything like this where I am at.