Picked up a couple oddball terminal emulator keyboards... sort-of XT interface

[Red October]

So a couple weeks ago I found a superb deal on eBay, two unnamed VT220 terminal emulator keyboards with Cherry Blacks and DIN-5 plugs.  I figured one of them would be a nice home for the keycaps I have off an old terminal board, and I like the VT220 layout.  The DIN-5 said to me that they were possibly AT or XT interface, both easily adapted today to modern interfaces.  First I tried with just a DIN-5 to PS/2, but had no luck.  Then I tried my Soarer's Converter for an XT Model F, and had a really weird outcome: the keyboard types, but the keys are all wrong.  Like, not just the special keys, but ALL the keys.  They send scancodes and type characters, but they're vastly, vastly wrong, as if everything were shifted up the keyboard a few rows, and also shuffled around a bit.  So the function keys type letters, and keys in the typing block do functions, change lock status, etc.  Who made these, what were they used for, and is there a way to make them behave more normally?





If they're as much a mystery to the rest of the community as they are to me, I'll crack one open and we can have a look inside and see what can be learned there.

[ScottPaladin]

Could it be that the boards talk scancode set 3? I know a bunch of other terminal boards do. Soarer's is supposed to detect what it's talking to but I've heard you have to force it sometimes.

[Red October]

Could it be that the boards talk scancode set 3? I know a bunch of other terminal boards do. Soarer's is supposed to detect what it's talking to but I've heard you have to force it sometimes.

How do I figure this out?

[ErgoMacros]

Maybe if you posted a small table of some key presses and the typed result someone could help break the code?

[ScottPaladin]

How do I figure this out?

You can try forcing set 3 in your soarer config.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I definitely recognise the case; I have a feeling it's a design of keyboard that shows up every so often, but it's not one that has ever been documented. (I think normally that case is used for a regular 101/102-key keyboard, not a terminal keyboard.) It's not any of the LK201 clones listed on the wiki.

[thokir]

I definitely recognise the case; I have a feeling it's a design of keyboard that shows up every so often, but it's not one that has ever been documented. (I think normally that case is used for a regular 101/102-key keyboard, not a terminal keyboard.)

I guess you see  the WYSE WY85 quite often, don't you? The case is pretty much the same, same goes for the layout beside of the arrow keys : )

[Daniel Beardsmore]

No, I mean where the four sides are chamfered and where the function key strip goes all the way to the edges — it's a very specific design. As I recall, normally there is just an empty channel in the case there. I cannot remember now if anyone has ever bought one and examined it, or whether they've only ever posted auction listing images of these.

[invariance]

The arrows look like the MTek K104.


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