16 thoughts on “XT To AT Keyboard Adapter

  1. Yeah, it’s XT–>RS232 rather than XT–>AT/PS2. Completely different protocols there. Cool in its own right, but it doesn’t appear useful for getting an old 83-key IBM board working on a Windows box, or anything like that. (Which is what I’ve been wanting to do forever.)

    Might be fun to try hooking my old IBM 3270 keyboard up to a Linux box, though.

  2. Hai guys ‘n gals,

    The keyboard is mine ;-)

    Handed it over to Bob some time ago because he seemed so cock-
    sure he would get it to work.

    Well, he did a magnificent job — today demonstrated to me its
    workings (on Linux, naturally).

    What’s so great is that this keyboard has a /lot/ of keys,
    plus the key touch is something to get almost orgasmic about.
    It’s one of those good old buckling spring-keyboards.
    The sound…. the feel…..!

    TODO: change the green LEDs on the keyboard to blue ones.
    Yes, I can do this myself…

    Now I’ll have a hard time trying to decide what will be my
    keyboard of choice on Linux: my ‘Sun Type 5C’ (with keyclick!),
    or the Memorex. Come to think of it: I can hang both off my
    Linux box ;-)

    Btw. some old pictures of the keyboard, right after I bought
    it for about $2 over two years ago, and at which time I felt
    rather cranky because there seemed no way I could use it, are
    at http://www.xs4all.nl/~bjdouma

    Happy hacking!

    bjd

  3. ermm, am I not getting the point, but why don’t you simply attach the XT keyboard to the AT/PS/2 keyboard port on your PC and compile xtkbd.c instead of atkbd.c into your kernel? Surely, the keyboard won’t work in the BIOS or bootloader, but as soon as the kernel is loaded, it should work quite perfectly. The electrical interface is identical, the main difference is that the XT keyboard will emit single Bytes as scancodes with the make/break bit set or not and the AT will send press/release bytes.

  4. xtkbd is for connecting a xt keyboard to the parallel port, not to a ps/2 port.
    For some reason it didn’t work with this keyboard, and even if it would work you would have to modify the source to get all the keys working.

    I don’t see much difference between hooking the keyboard up to the parallel port or to the serial port, other than using a microcontroller.

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