Good morning and Merry Christmas everyone.
I haven't visited these forums in ages mostly because I actually managed to collect some really good keyboards back when I was active and have had no need to replace any of them.
I just got a new laptop for work and the "Thunderbolt Dock G2" that it uses no longer supports PS/2. D'oh! At work I was using a Filco Majestouch 2 that I'd modded back in the day with Cherry Clears and some cool Imsto dye sub PBT keycaps. Was running it in PS/2 mode but that one works fine over USB.
At home I've been running a rotation of keyboards, currently an IBM Model M.
So here's the problem. I got a second dock and power supply for home use, hooked it up, and no keyboard. This is with the same Belkin converter that I've been using for my personal laptop for ages. I assumed it was something with the dock and/or laptop (keyboard is actually running through the USB hub built into one of my HP monitors, but that's another issue... at some point I need to find a good USB 3.0 USB hub because the number of ports on the TB Dock are totally inadequate.) but that is not the case. The ONLY keyboard I could get to work was an old IBM Model F running through a Soarer's converter, but I can't use that for work because of the non standard F key layout; I've been using AutoCAD for going on 30 years now and I cannot unlearn that muscle memory.
Today I went to hook up a KB to my personal laptop and no go. Come to find out that only one of the ports on my Belkin converter is working, and I of course picked the wrong one when I went to hook up the M to my new work setup. So now I'm typing this to you on the M on my work machine through the one working (for now, I assume) port on the Belkin converter, and the F is back on my personal laptop because that desk is very small and I don't need F-keys there. So far so good.
However it appears that that Belkin converter that was one of the few 10 years ago or so that would 100% work with a Model M is discontinued and is only available used on eBay. So what should I do? Buy one of those? Is there another affordable option out there? Or should I just suck it up and pay the $35 for another Soarer's converter from "tinkerboy.xyz"? I really don't need all the features of that converter, I was just trying to use the Model F I've had in my junk box for ages and it seemed to be the only decent XT to USB converter available, but all my other good boards are native PS/2 (Model M, Wyse, and SGI Granite)
Thanks for any advice you can offer. I would like to get something soon as I suspect if one channel has failed on this converter the other is likely to follow and my only other option is to buy a new KB that speaks USB natively. Recommendations for a good USB 3.0 hub would be appreciated as well, as I remember a few years back going through some garbage USB 2.0 hubs before finding that the Targus ones were the only ones that would actually work reliably - the cheap one I tried first off Amazon literally smoked within minutes of hooking it up.