Asus Crosshair3 vs AT102W = me stuck with dome junk

[allikat]

I picked myself up a pair of old AT102W keyboards for a bargain price.  I've tried them both on my main machine, and nada, nothing and zip.  Opened them up and did a continuity check on the cables, and found nothing wrong.  Swapped boards and cables around, still nothing.  It gets annoying with the booting up and powering down to check keyboards, it complains...
They both have regular PS/2 cables, and plug straight in nicely.  However, on a whim, I tried them on a spare (ancient P4) machine, and voila, life majestic from both.

Does my nice Asus Crosshair 3 not like them?  Are they actually faulty in a way my old P4 can't pick up?  They seemed to work ok on the P4, and the PS/2 socket on the Asus based machine works ok with this rubber dome compaq thing.. what's up?  Any ideas?

[mich]

These Dells don't work well with some PS/2 controllers. There are basically two things you can do:

1. Use a USB adapter. Beware that some of them won't work with your AT102W at all or will reset spontaneously or drop random keypresses. Read the linked article and discussion for reports about particular keyboard-adapter combos that people have tested and found out to work. IIRC the Blue Cube has been said to be Dell-friendly.

2. Try this mod. It helped with my AT101W and one noname USB adapter.

[allikat]

Mich, excellent answer.  Do you have pics/thread showing where to install the resistors on your keyboard?  The controller board should be similar to the AT102W.

[bazemk1979]

i have asus crosshair 3 and my dell at101w works fine with blue cube and with alone ps/2 connection, so does other ps/2 boards.

[mich]

PS/2 pinout. You can easily identify the lines using this diagram and a continuity tester.

Resistors are needed between VCC and CLOCK and between VCC and DATA, like this:

Code: [Select]

DATA---+---
       R
 VCC---+---
       R
 CLK---+---

 They can be installed anywhere from the motherboard to the keyboard PCB. I have soldered them to a PS/2 extension cable and connected this cable between AT101W and USB adapter.


BTW, after few months of use my AT101W started to work even without this cable. I swear it didn't work before, so it seems that it "fixed itself" at some point during this time, possibly due to some components slightly changing their parameters with use.

I'm not saying that you should power up these keyboards and wait three months for them becoming operational, but this phenomenon might explain why bazemk1979 claims that his AT101W works with the same motherboard.