Trackball on Marquardt Military Keyboard

[Greystoke]

I have a question about the information in the DT Wiki about the Marquardt Military Keyboard.

For Interface, the descriptions reads:

PS/2 for keys, RS232 (1200 Baud) for trackball over a DA-15 D-SUB connector

Does this mean that I can use the keyboard by soldering on a PS/2 or USB connection, but to use the trackball I have to have the D-SUB connector?

And if I do need the D-SUB connector to make the trackball work, which wires are specific to the trackball, versus the keyboard itself?

I'm still waiting to receive the Marquardt keyboards from the eBay.de sale, in the interim I am researching what modifications will be required to make this keyboard work with a Windows PC.

[Daniel]

There's one D-SUB connector. On the pins of this connector there is the PS/2 signal as well the signal for the trackball.
You can solder yourself a adapter like this:


The information about the mouse is from a thread at geekhack. I didn't test if it really works like it was described there.

[Greystoke]

There's one D-SUB connector. On the pins of this connector there is the PS/2 signal as well the signal for the trackball.
You can solder yourself a adapter like this:


The information about the mouse is from a thread at geekhack. I didn't test if it really works like it was described there.

I was thinking of replacing the fixed cable with a detachable unit, using an Amphenol bulkhead USB connector.

USBBF7.jpg (102.08 KiB) Viewed 1972 times

USBBF7-mm.jpg (60.4 KiB) Viewed 1972 times

If I need to have a PS/2 connector, I think there is a similar unit. Just eyeballing the wiki pictures, it looks like there is enough room to drill the top case near the existing PCB-to-cable connector.

Marquardt_military_keyboard_7069-3111_cable_attachment.jpg (90.37 KiB) Viewed 1972 times

I'd like to make the trackball functional, hopefully it will be recognized via the PS/2 connector.

[Daniel]

As far as I understood it the trackball doesn't speak PS/2 as it's a serial connection. But as stated above I didn't test it.

[REVENGE]

You could probably Teensy it up or use a serial to USB adapter.

I was thinking of replacing that whole section with a multi-touch trackpad for Win 8.

[Ascaii]

I can confirm the trackball uses ps2 interface. There have been several members of GH that modified their boards to use two ps2 headers instead of the serial connector.