God’s own keyboard, now with Bluetooth
For decades a thunderous roar rose from the bowels of IBM keyboards like the animus of angry and forgotten gods. These keyboards have fallen silent of late, due only to incompatibility with newer hardware. Now, Model Ms have been given a*reprieve*from landfills or recycling centers because of the work of [wulax] of geekhack and his Model M Bluetooth controller board.
Because of some very old and power-hungry electronics, the Model M*sometimes draws more power from a PS/2 port than a computer can supply. That means*PS/2 to USB adapters don’t work sometimes. In any event, PS/2 ports were declared a legacy port 11 years ago. We’re surprised that new motherboards still include one.
[wulax] got around all these problems by taking the Bluetooth controller out of a cheap mini keyboard and mapping the Model M rows and columns to it. A PCB was made and a rather large battery was stuffed inside the Model M. Now a keyboard from 1984 is wireless and able to interface with just about every computer made in the last few years.
There are a couple leftover PCBs [wulax] is hanging onto. We’d love to see these Model M replacement boards manufactured as a drop-in replacement for Model Ms. Actually, we’re wondering why this hasn’t been done already. If you’ve got an idea, leave a note in the comments.
Filed under: classic hacks, hardware, peripherals hacks
For decades a thunderous roar rose from the bowels of IBM keyboards like the animus of angry and forgotten gods. These keyboards have fallen silent of late, due only to incompatibility with newer hardware. Now, Model Ms have been given a*reprieve*from landfills or recycling centers because of the work of [wulax] of geekhack and his Model M Bluetooth controller board.
Because of some very old and power-hungry electronics, the Model M*sometimes draws more power from a PS/2 port than a computer can supply. That means*PS/2 to USB adapters don’t work sometimes. In any event, PS/2 ports were declared a legacy port 11 years ago. We’re surprised that new motherboards still include one.
[wulax] got around all these problems by taking the Bluetooth controller out of a cheap mini keyboard and mapping the Model M rows and columns to it. A PCB was made and a rather large battery was stuffed inside the Model M. Now a keyboard from 1984 is wireless and able to interface with just about every computer made in the last few years.
There are a couple leftover PCBs [wulax] is hanging onto. We’d love to see these Model M replacement boards manufactured as a drop-in replacement for Model Ms. Actually, we’re wondering why this hasn’t been done already. If you’ve got an idea, leave a note in the comments.
Filed under: classic hacks, hardware, peripherals hacks