I received two things in the post today. One of them is an Apple Extended Keyboard (model M0115) with what I'm fairly certain are orange Alps key switches... assuming I'm not colourblind. This was left for me on my porch by some courier I've never heard of called CanPar, courtesy of that irritating eBay Global Shipping
racket program. It also came with an ADB mouse for some reason. The mouse is filthy and the keyboard will need a good washing. Oh well. Ebay.
However, I also had the wherewithall to go out and check those dumb postal boxes that only seem to exist here in Canada to which all mail is delivered. There's one for every postal code (a dozen or so houses) and everone gets a box. I'm told this way is much cheaper than door to door deliveries. Anyway, in it I found a small parcel which I later discovered contained the second of two very cheap PS/2 to USB adapters I bought a while back, also on eBay. The first one showed up around a week ago and the first time I tried it with my Model M nothing happened at all, exactly as I would have suspected. When I plugged my Model M into the second one however, to my shock I saw all three LEDs triumphantly light up, and turn off a few seconds later. I tentatively pressed the num lock key and the num lock light lit up. The caps lock and scroll lock did the same. I opened notepad and again to great surprise the keyboard seemed to be working just fine.
The two converters look very similar, the only differences seem to be very much superficial. The first one is made from a white plastic with an oval indentation in which the MADE IN CHINA logo is centered, while the second one is a grey plastic with a rectangular indent. In fact, it looks a tad cheaper. When I took it out of it's "packaging" the plastic cover for the tiny PCB promptly split in two and revealed the sparce innards of the device. I was surprised enough to see this piece of crap work that I decided to dig out the first one again and give it another go. Well, this time, it worked. In fact, I'm typing with it right now. I did not expect that, to tell the truth.
I was assured by various people that cheap adapters like this would simply not work. They supposedly cannot provide enough juice for the board and in fact don't convert the signal at all but instead require the keyboard to be able to send both a USB or PS/2 signal through the one cable and simply redirect the signal wires to a USB out. And yet these two seem to work. I don't understand. They're actually working better than another more expensive converter I bought, which failed to actually light up the LEDs for some reason, and they seem to be about the same as my Blue Cube. They definitely only provide 6-key roleover but as far as I know the venerable Blue Cube does no better.
Anyone know what the heck is up here?
I suspect that this one was the first to arrive:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/221604670639and this was the second:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/301227345051but honestly I don't know for sure. I bought them on the same day and the photos are probably not representative of the actual product.
This converter did not activate the LEDs:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/280839328798