geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: DeltaForza123 on Fri, 01 January 2021, 00:33:36
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So my Discord is IRS #8007 so if you wanna give me tips just shoot me a message there.
ok so here is my idea. I have a model m and I was thinking. would it be possible for me to take the coiled cable. snip off the PS2 connector. put a USB connector in its place. snip on the SDL and put a USB-C connector on there and essentially have an IBM cable I can use with the custom keyboard I am building? then take the USB C cable I sacrificed and stick the SDL and ps2 connectors on that. I know it is kind of dumb but if anyone is willing to give me any tips or anything. cuz I think it is a nice looking cable.
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You can't just cut off a PS2 connector and attach a USB, keyboards that had simple adapters are programmed to work with both, the Model M is not. It requires an active adapter, most use what's called the "Blue Cube". It's a small cube PS2 to USB adapter. https://deskthority.net/wiki/Converter
They are small enough you can even mount them in place of the original connector or deeper inside, from there you can do what you want cable-wise.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160201073007/http://zevv.nl/play/misc/ibm-usb/
Note these are not the most reliable adapter, but they are known to work with the Model M, most PS2 to USB adapters don't pass enough power to allow the Model M to function as Model Ms are very power hungry. So much that not all motherboards can even run them off the PS2 port.
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You could replace the cable's SDL and PS/2 connectors with USB-C and USB-A respectively, to make it into a USB cable. But for having USB-C in both ends, you would need a cable with at least five wires + shield, and a PS/2 cable contains only four.
Preferably, you should also use a cable where the wires you use for D+ and D- are a twisted pair, which none are in a PS/2 cable. And I don't know if your PS/2 cable is even shielded.
I don't think a SDL connector could have its wires taken out of the connector and new ones inserted: you would have to cut off a distance from it and then splice each wire.
Also, soldering USB-C is fiddly. In the best case, both results would look ugly.
Personally, I wouldn't destroy an original vintage SDL cable.
There are cheap ready-made coiled USB cables to buy.
Alternatively, you could get a long straight USB cable and coil it yourself, making the coils as large as you'd want them: there are a few threads about coiling cables.