If you dig the older switch based keyboards, you’ll like this. As a favor to a friend, [Bob van Loosen] built a small converter using a pic16F84 to make an XT telex keyboard usable with modern AT style computers.
16 thoughts on “XT To AT Keyboard Adapter”
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Nice and clean, first to post!
you can use XT keyboards without special converters under Linux, you just plug them in to LPT port :)
wait wait. modern AT style? AT has been out of style for at least a dozen years.
Woohoo! time to dust out that ibm keyboard!
@ #2
It’s more modern than XT, at least. AT converts easily to PS/2 with an adapter.
It looks to me more like he built an XT keyboard to RS232 converter, but still a neat project.
hay same mouse i mean nice hack im not a pic fan though the compilers cost alot
wow, pretty snazzy!
pic compilers don’t cost alot. you can use picc-lite or boostc for free , and theres JAL, an opensource language designed for pics, or like most hardcore pic developers, you can use ASM.
Have a look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmYDgncMhXw
I think the hack-a-day crowd will feel it rings a bell…
(no – it’s not spam – see it’s not my site)
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.
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
It’s time to dust out that ibm keyboard! thanks.
It’s time to dust out that ibm keyboard!
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.
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.