keyboard detected as barcode scanner

[shine]

Hi!

I have an issue, I bought a NTC KB-6251-EA (spanish layout, rebranded as an IDEA keyboard) with white Alps switches.

My problem is that when i plug it in windows and MacOS shows a "Barcode scanner" and not a keyboard, so its unusable. I have it connected via DIN to PS2 (passive) and PS/2 to USB (active).

I cleaned it up thoroughly, i broke it? how? :S

The lights are on, and respond to bloq.num, caps lock and bloq. despl.

When i press 2 arrow keys at the same time the mouse cursor moves on screen, and all the tree lights flashes once.

Is there a solution? or it will became a switch donor

THANKS!!

[Maledicted]

While interesting, I don't know that I would worry about the keyboard being detected as a barcode scanner. What I actually most often see is barcode scanners being detected as keyboards. This should actually make perfect sense in that all it is doing is interpreting bars and outputting their corresponding ASCII characters. You may feel I shouldn't have to ask, but this keyboard is switched to AT mode, correct, not XT? Does the adapter work with other ps/2 keyboards?

[Tactile]

it might not be a problem with the hardware at all. It might just be that the USB identifier code is incorrectly listed in the USB list of codes, or whatever it's called.

Operating systems generally don't "figure out" what a USB device is. They query the device, receive a vendor & device code, then look up these codes. If your keyboard is incorrectly listed, that would explain it.

http://the-sz.com/products/usbid/

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html

[Maledicted]

Nirsoft, nice. They make some great little utilities.

I think I have that same adapter (or at least one that looks exactly the same) on the way from Amazon, since I want to find something that works with the Zenith Z-150. I ordered 4 or 5 different ones just to be sure and figured I would find uses for them anyway. I'll see what device manager says about it when I get it.

[yui]

just as a bit of extra my unicomp pc122 PS/2 is identified in windows 7 and 10 as a barcode scanner as well, as maledicted pointed out keyboards and barcode scanners do the same thing as far as windows knows, they give character inputs. admittedly a barcode scanner is usually much faster than a human typing but windows never seemed to care that i had a particularly fast keyboard and a particularly slow barcode scanner. and some "cheaper" active ps/2 adapter will crash with older boards, from what you describe i would suspect your adapter to be the cause of your issues  (actually price to performance seems pretty random some 1usd works better than some 5usd) i have been lucky and found some a while back that worked well and stocked up on them, two that are pretty much guaranteed to work are soarer's (https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=17458.0) and hasu's (https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=72052.0) ps2 converters both can be found prebuilt or can be made at home with a teensy/pro micro. just hope you can make it work, that would be annoying to see an other of those board destroyed only for a faulty converter

[shine]

Thanks everyone, i'll buy and try another adapter. Hope the board is healthy.

Those 2 programs (sz and nirsoft) show a barcode scanner as well.

 Ty!

[shine]

btw I plugged the IBM M2 with the same adapter and shows "Barcode Reader" as well, so... new adapter.

The odd thing is that the NTC board doesnt work via ps/2....

Ty all!

[Maledicted]

Does the M2 work with the adapter? You are sure that the protocol switch on the bottom of the casing is set to AT (80286), right? 8088 is for the XT protocol and won't work with any commercial (unless you count Orihalcon) adapters.

[Maledicted]

Alright. I got the first two adapters. In spite of the fact that their product pages clearly showed adapters that looked, at least superficially, different, they both look exactly the same, and their IDs are identical. When I first installed them, they showed up as barcode scanners. Throughout my use of them in testing a few keyboards, I don't know when, they relabeled themselves as keyboards.



Maybe yours is different, but I'm thinking it is the same, as it looks exactly the same externally. As I had suspected, at least with mine, the vendor and product IDs return a result for not only a keyboard, but also a barcode reader. I imagine the controller is basically identical in both:

http://the-sz.com/products/usbid/index.php?v=0x13ba&p=0x0018&n=

Unfortunately for me, neither of these adapters works reliably with my Z-150, but they work with more normal ps/2 standard keyboards just fine. The hunt continues tomorrow.

I'm still curious to see whether or not the keyboard is just switched to the wrong setting.

The packaging looks almost identical. They didn't even bother to change the description on the back, and it looks like they changed the background layer of the stolen Google images and their toddler doodle adapter. Great names too. This Techno tech adapter's going to work great with my keyboard board.

   

[yui]

to be honest my experience with those cable adapters and M keyboard was very poor, i found a little blue adapter on ebay that works very well but i guess that it is pretty random and it was just a bit of luck. but then Maledicted pointed out that the keyboard may be XT (page code 1) and those will only work with soarer's converter i think, maybe hasu's as well but i am not sure.

[Findecanor]

BTW, in the picture you connected it to the green plug. Green plugs are for mice. Purple plugs are for keyboards. But maybe it doesn't matter ...

[Maledicted]

to be honest my experience with those cable adapters and M keyboard was very poor, i found a little blue adapter on ebay that works very well but i guess that it is pretty random and it was just a bit of luck. but then Maledicted pointed out that the keyboard may be XT (page code 1) and those will only work with soarer's converter i think, maybe hasu's as well but i am not sure.

I think his board should have an AT/XT switch though.

BTW, in the picture you connected it to the green plug. Green plugs are for mice. Purple plugs are for keyboards. But maybe it doesn't matter ...

Good catch. I didn't even notice. I'll try hooking a keyboard to the green connector on one of mine tonight. No idea if it matters with these adapters. I know it did on real ps/2 ports. I remember often being annoyed if the mouse or keyboard connectors weren't color coded, or the corresponding ports on the IO panel weren't, or both, and having to go back and reverse them.

[yui]

the mouse connector uses the 2 other pins for its data and clock, if i am not mistaken, so it should do absolutely nothing

(the ps/2 connector has 6 pins, only four of those are used for keyboards and only 2 of those are signals, the two other being power and ground)

[Maledicted]

the mouse connector uses the 2 other pins for its data and clock, if i am not mistaken, so it should do absolutely nothing

(the ps/2 connector has 6 pins, only four of those are used for keyboards and only 2 of those are signals, the two other being power and ground)

Is this your Ebay adapter, yui?

I struck out entirely. That has the same hardware as the other two. I got another in today that while the product page made it look different, it is identical to the other two beige ones I already have. I got this as well:



... which is, you guessed it, the exact same hardware inside.

[yui]

the one i have had luck with is the little blue one yeah, i have removed the blue shell so that it fits better on hubs, the other one reset whenever i use more than one key on my Ms (all 122 though, might be that but only one is in code set 3 the other are unicomps in code set 2), already Ms are not that great in games, but if they reset on space-W they become pretty useless (in games, although even when typing it was a problem).
i think the blue ones may not have the same hardware, they identifies as the same hid class (barcode reader) but in my experience handle old boards more gracefully than other adapters, even a belkins one do not work with Ms, but a very old usb powered port extender with ps/2 and parallel did also work very well

[Maledicted]

the one i have had luck with is the little blue one yeah, i have removed the blue shell so that it fits better on hubs, the other one reset whenever i use more than one key on my Ms (all 122 though, might be that but only one is in code set 3 the other are unicomps in code set 2), already Ms are not that great in games, but if they reset on space-W they become pretty useless (in games, although even when typing it was a problem).
i think the blue ones may not have the same hardware, they identifies as the same hid class (barcode reader) but in my experience handle old boards more gracefully than other adapters, even a belkins one do not work with Ms, but a very old usb powered port extender with ps/2 and parallel did also work very well

I do actually have one of those old usb port replicators ... somewhere. I'll have to dig that out and try it too.