Terminal Model F

[Morning Song]

If anyone else is interested in doing a Terminal Model F Mod, one just came up on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-6110668-122-KEY-Keyboard-3179-100-/360278635036?cmd=ViewItem&pt=PCA_Mice_Trackballs&hash=item53e247b21c

[EverythingIBM]

Do those actually using model F springs?

If so, I would love to have one of those. Pity.

[ch_123]

Yep, it's a real-deal Model F.

I want to get my hands on one of these beasts some day...

[EverythingIBM]

Yep, it's a real-deal Model F.

I want to get my hands on one of these beasts some day...

Damn! Forget a Model F AT. The layout is very tolerable on one of those too... well, I'm #2 who wants one of those some day.

[Morning Song]

I have one! It's genuine F springs. Great to type on, but either my computer isn't able to recognize it (hybrid PS/2 port), or i fried the controller.

[microsoft windows]

I've been wanting to get a terminal F for a while. I'll buy one some day.

[Morning Song]

Refer to the links in my signature.

I did! Extensively. And i greatly appreciated the info therein. But i think i'm a klutz at wiring.

(By not recognized, i mean the system says no keyboard plugged in at all at bootup)

[Morning Song]

Not that's in working order... between the Sweetie and me, we both have systems that have hybrid PS/2 ports.

And unfortunately, the most sophisticated piece of electronics equipment i have is a roll of electrical tape and a household continuity tester.

[ch_123]

The Model F controllers are pretty tough. I've plugged my Model F in with the connector on the wrong pins, and there's a long and rather amusing story of me repeatedly shorting it out whilst 'testing' it before I reassembled the keyboard...

[Morning Song]

Ooooh. Then perhaps i just need to redo the cable.

[EverythingIBM]

Ooooh. Then perhaps i just need to redo the cable.

Thov mvste telleth vs hovv suche an compaffe shalle goe.

[Morning Song]

Thov mvste telleth vs hovv suche an compaffe shalle goe.

....Is my language really that archaic?  I mean, Middle English I can see. But don't I at least quality for a proper u?

[EverythingIBM]

....Is my language really that archaic?  I mean, Middle English I can see. But don't I at least quality for a proper u?

Well I'm sure it's better than: HOW IS UR KEYBORD GOIN TO TERN OUT?

Old Englishe doth amuse me, especially since 98% of the people today don't understand it. There's still a lot of older words I don't know, I've bothered so many english teachers and they simply don't know the words I ask. But I guess it doesn't help that I had an english teacher who said when I wrote "mead" that it wasn't a word (that was in grade 7). This year (in which I am in grade 12 and graduated), I confronted that teacher, who seemed to have a failing memory and didn't remember me, and told her how I didn't like how she docked marks simply because of her own incapacity for understanding a simple four lettered word.

Yes the above paragraph may have many fragments, but I write like that when I'm frustrated.

[TexasFlood]

If anyone else is interested in doing a Terminal Model F Mod, one just came up on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-6110668-122-KEY-Keyboard-3179-100-/360278635036?cmd=ViewItem&pt=PCA_Mice_Trackballs&hash=item53e247b21c

Looks like this thing might go for about $20. I might have to bite, cheap enough and probably worth some trouble to get the model f capacitive switches with this layout.  Hmm, to bid or not to bid, my wife sure better not be around if THIS thing comes to the door, :wink:.

[Morning Song]

Let me put it this way: You will not see me with one of these on my head.

[TexasFlood]

Let me put it this way: You will not see me with one of these on my head.

I bet typing on this thing would be great.  And from the picture it looks very clean.  After cleaning the filthy Mighty Mouse I just bought, that is a big plus for me, :-D.

[Morning Song]

It's a little lighter on the keystroke than my M or my Unicomp (though that might be due to age), and it's much more resonant. It's like IBM Music.

[TexasFlood]

It's a little lighter on the keystroke than my M or my Unicomp (though that might be due to age), and it's much more resonant. It's like IBM Music.

"IBM Music", man that sounds tempting, :smile:, at least to me.  I'll check it again tomorrow, if it's still $20 I might have to have it.

[EverythingIBM]

Let me put it this way: You will not see me with one of these on my head.

Awww why not?

It's a little lighter on the keystroke than my M or my Unicomp (though that might be due to age), and it's much more resonant. It's like IBM Music.

I was actually thinking of recording various switch noises from IBM keyboards, and making a little song out of them with pitch changes. Maybe some day...

"IBM Music", man that sounds tempting, :smile:, at least to me.  I'll check it again tomorrow, if it's still $20 I might have to have it.

Well, if you must have it, you must tell us all about it when you get it -- or... men in blue will hunt you down.

[TexasFlood]

Well, if you must have it, you must tell us all about it when you get it -- or... men in blue will hunt you down.

If I do get it, you'll hear as I'll be whining for help to get it working, :wink:.  Of course realistically most likely I'll get wrapped up in work and forget about it and someone else will end up with it.

[microsoft windows]

I never was the king of spelling and grammer. But I at least try to write so you all can understand me.

[EverythingIBM]

I never was the king of spelling and grammer. But I at least try t'write so Y'ALL can understand me, ya hear?

Of course not, you're the king of vintage computers.

[TexasFlood]

It's a little lighter on the keystroke than my M or my Unicomp (though that might be due to age), and it's much more resonant. It's like IBM Music.

"IBM Music", man that sounds tempting, :smile:, at least to me.  I'll check it again tomorrow, if it's still $20 I might have to have it.

Looks like I might have some unplanned, unexpected and unwelcome :sad: car expenses.  Chances are I might not be bidding on this.  But even if I can't somebody go buy this thing so I can vicariously experience fixing it up and typing on it, :biggrin:.

[dfj]

"IBM Music", man that sounds tempting, :smile:, at least to me.  I'll check it again tomorrow, if it's still $20 I might have to have it.

  Yeah - not quite co certain why, but these terminal boards with really solid construction have this _music_ to them. The sound of each spring is a little different, and when you get the touch (no bottoming), a lot of them (but not all) will ring for a much longer while than normal M springs.

  I have a mess of terminal boards, but only the F terminals and a single M: the  1386887, sing for me. All of these keyboards have the side buttons and dual-option legs, though - and there are some mighty springs in there too - it might be that certain springs are resonant with the 'big' springs and help the music. I don't have any normal-sized F boards, so mebbe they sing too.
  (temped to add a number of bigger springs and some tuned resonator rods into the back of my terminal boards to test this theory.)

feeling the music,
dfj

[TexasFlood]

Ending soon!  Somebody snipe it so I can get a report how it works & sounds!  ;-).  Says tested & working, guaranteed in the ad, which probably means they don't know what it is, but maybe means it will work without modification?

[TexasFlood]

Ending soon!  Somebody snipe it so I can get a report how it works & sounds!  ;-).  Says tested & working, guaranteed in the ad, which probably means they don't know what it is, but maybe means it will work without modification?

Looks like I'm going to miss this one but will have to do some research on what has to be done to make these work and find a deal sometime soon.  I want to hear that "singing", :wink:.

[ch_123]

****ing hell, went for almost nothing. Too bad at even that price, the $70 shipping would have put it well beyond my budget.

[sethstorm]

It's a little lighter on the keystroke than my M or my Unicomp (though that might be due to age), and it's much more resonant. It's like IBM Music.

I just note that it's a bit more "springy".

Looks like I'm going to miss this one but will have to do some research on what has to be done to make these work and find a deal sometime soon.  I want to hear that "singing", :wink:.

See my signature.

[TexasFlood]

See my signature.

Thanks for the pointer...  Cause I actually ended up getting this thing, couldn't resist, hope my wife doesn't see it, she'll kill me.

[dfj]

...and welcome to the club.

Seth and Kishy are the original fans of the things, and I'm the n00b, but we are pretty crazy about them.

Nice thing about F's, they can be entirely taken apart and maintained. No bolt-mod is needed to deal with any membrane or some-such.

It can be a decent bit of work, depending on what you want to do to it, and which OS you have, but if yer on XP or linux, it's mainly just the cable swap.

I can often be found on #geekhack, and I've seen kish and seth there from time to time also.

And, this place is full of folks with useful advice - as much as you care to ask for.

g'luck.
dfj

[sethstorm]

...and welcome to the club.

Seth and Kishy are the original fans of the things, and I'm the n00b, but we are pretty crazy about them.

Nice thing about F's, they can be entirely taken apart and maintained. No bolt-mod is needed to deal with any membrane or some-such.

It can be a decent bit of work, depending on what you want to do to it, and which OS you have, but if yer on XP or linux, it's mainly just the cable swap.

I can often be found on #geekhack, and I've seen kish and seth there from time to time also.

And, this place is full of folks with useful advice - as much as you care to ask for.

g'luck.
dfj

Been out due to irregularities from my ISP.

[TexasFlood]

...and welcome to the club.

Seth and Kishy are the original fans of the things, and I'm the n00b, but we are pretty crazy about them.

Nice thing about F's, they can be entirely taken apart and maintained. No bolt-mod is needed to deal with any membrane or some-such.

It can be a decent bit of work, depending on what you want to do to it, and which OS you have, but if yer on XP or linux, it's mainly just the cable swap.

I can often be found on #geekhack, and I've seen kish and seth there from time to time also.

And, this place is full of folks with useful advice - as much as you care to ask for.

g'luck.
dfj

Thanks.  I was a little nervous about this as I didn't really understand the details of what's involved to get it working.  Hopefully won't be too painful! :smile:.

[dfj]

Ooooh. Then perhaps i just need to redo the cable.

Hybrid connector - I've had vigourous problems with these.

I am typing on one now - Kish's and sethstorm's advice can be made to work, but it is a little bit of a black art.

Likely your cable is good... but getting the mainboard to recognize it as a PS2 is a bit black-art-ish.

Currently, I am booting with a normal PS2 keyboard, then swapping it out for a terminal after putting my box to sleep. In this situation, the driver doesn't ask the mainboard if the keyboard is there before re-initializing it. Sadly, the kb _is_ powered up during sleep, so there is non-zero risk to the mainboard controller when doing so.
  A kvm might allow the swap - but mine (D-link) buggers it up by sending all sorts of commands that the PC didn't send, which piss off my keyboard.

I'm making a USB->PS2 converter dongle - hopefully it will be ready for non-dfj testing soon. right now I'm still killing bugs severe enough that to make it not ready fer gaming or typing, though...

Don't get rid of it! We'll either figure out how to safely connect them to the hybrid ports, or the USB thing will be done soon. My USB device is based on the teensy (/++), so it will be possible to wire up without soldering, depending on which spare parts one has lying around.

yup
dfj

[Morning Song]

It's most certainly not gotten rid of... in fact, it's on its way to Kishy, who can hopefully make it work

[TexasFlood]

Hybrid connector - I've had vigourous problems with these.

I am typing on one now - Kish's and sethstorm's advice can be made to work, but it is a little bit of a black art.

Likely your cable is good... but getting the mainboard to recognize it as a PS2 is a bit black-art-ish.

Currently, I am booting with a normal PS2 keyboard, then swapping it out for a terminal after putting my box to sleep. In this situation, the driver doesn't ask the mainboard if the keyboard is there before re-initializing it. Sadly, the kb _is_ powered up during sleep, so there is non-zero risk to the mainboard controller when doing so.
  A kvm might allow the swap - but mine (D-link) buggers it up by sending all sorts of commands that the PC didn't send, which piss off my keyboard.

I'm making a USB->PS2 converter dongle - hopefully it will be ready for non-dfj testing soon. right now I'm still killing bugs severe enough that to make it not ready fer gaming or typing, though...

Don't get rid of it! We'll either figure out how to safely connect them to the hybrid ports, or the USB thing will be done soon. My USB device is based on the teensy (/++), so it will be possible to wire up without soldering, depending on which spare parts one has lying around.

yup
dfj

I just got that one from ebay.  it looks good.  There is a little paint gone on teh bottom edge and corner, an unfortunate scratch across under the IBM logo which I'm guessing is from a knife slip when trying to remove tape.  There is also a keycap missing on the 10 key pad on the left, didn't see it at first as there are blank keys on that pad and it just looked like another blank cap but it is in fact a missing cap.  Looking back this is all visible in the ebay advertisement but one has to look closer than I did to see it, not nearly as obvious as it is "in the flesh".  Overall though it seems to be in good shape although I have no way to test it now and am out of town next week so can't until after I get back.  But I bought the stupid thing so now want to get it to work, :wink:, so glad I'm in good company, :smile:.

[Morning Song]

The good news is that the keycaps are compatible with M and terminal M keycaps. so you could swipe one from another keyboard or, worse comes to worse, grab a couple from Unicomp.

It won't be too hard to get it open (Though you will need two sizes of nut driver.. 5mm or 7/32" (both work fine), and i believe the bigger one is 9/32. I lacked such a driver at the time and used a pair of needle nose pliers to undo the bolts, but that makes it harder to re-tighten them.

But if you don't have any cable splicing experience or tools... it will be a tricky mod, as i found out.

[TexasFlood]

The good news is that the keycaps are compatible with M and terminal M keycaps. so you could swipe one from another keyboard or, worse comes to worse, grab a couple from Unicomp.

It won't be too hard to get it open (Though you will need two sizes of nut driver.. 5mm or 7/32" (both work fine), and i believe the bigger one is 9/32. I lacked such a driver at the time and used a pair of needle nose pliers to undo the bolts, but that makes it harder to re-tighten them.

But if you don't have any cable splicing experience or tools... it will be a tricky mod, as i found out.

I've been busy on ebay mostly.  Have had a lot of good toys coming in that I have had little time to play with.  I'm gone for the next like 1 1/2 weeks but coming back to all these good toys, the model f terminal keyboard, Endurapro, KB-5181 and the Geekhack Space Saver from didjamatic.  All good deals I think.  The GHSS and KB-5181 are good to go, the other two are projects to different degrees.  Luckily I don't think my wife has seen any of them come it, carefully, and luckily, received/unpacked/cleaned/stored when she wasn't around.  :biggrin:.  Fun times, at least in terms of keyboards, :wink:

[Morning Song]

YES! *bounces and dances* You officially rock. Hardcore!

[Shawn Stanford]

Did anyone ever come up with a USB adapter that worked, or are the terminal keyboards still limited to PS/2 connectors? My own 'cable swap' example worked acceptably when plugged into a PS/2 (with the repeating keys problem, IIRC), but not at all over USB.

[ch_123]

I think it might work with the Belkin adapter. A lot of USB adapters don't support the Set 3 scancode... The SGI keyboards use the same set, and they fail horribly if you connect them to a Blue Cube, but work fine with the Belkin.

[Morning Song]

IIRC, the problem is with needing an unusual series of signals before it'll send both make and break scancodes, rather than the scancodes themselves. My uneducated guess is that it wouldn't work. Though once i have it back, if someone has a belkin adapter and would like to send it my way, i will send it back once i test it.

Incidentally, Kishy, feel free to enjoy the board while you have it. I'm glad it's been fun and educational!

[dfj]

Did anyone ever come up with a USB adapter that worked, or are the terminal keyboards still limited to PS/2 connectors? My own 'cable swap' example worked acceptably when plugged into a PS/2 (with the repeating keys problem, IIRC), but not at all over USB.

Yup - I have a working terminal mode 3 PS2 -> USB (with nkro supported).

I am testing it for a couple more days, and doing some superficial tidying, then trying to get samples into the hands of interested folks to try out. (i.e. terminal freaks)
  At present the converter is based on a teensy++ (2.0, from PCJR, the maker) which, while overkill, gives us lots of room to add alternate keymappings, macros and such.
  Been using it on text solidly for the last day, and did a bit of gaming on it last night  too.
  Going to open it up for a limited 'alpha' in a couple days - see what features folks want most, next, etc...

I also will need to throw together a decent well-photographed tutorial on installing it nicely into the case of a terminal board.

kinda chuffed, but kinda tired,
dfj

[didjamatic]

Great stuff DFJ, can't wait to hear more about it.

[Morning Song]

oooooh. My curiosity is piqued too

'specially if it could like...do ps/2 adapter passthrough-with-extras to handle stuff like Win2k's disabling, or motherboards that won't give it power because they don't think it's a PS/2 keyboard.

[dfj]

oooooh. My curiosity is piqued too

'specially if it could like...do ps/2 adapter passthrough-with-extras to handle stuff like Win2k's disabling, or motherboards that won't give it power because they don't think it's a PS/2 keyboard.

yup - is a PS2 passthrough - so it only requires replacing the terminal's cable with somthing it can eat.
 My current prototype sits inside the board, and plugs straight onto the IBM controller, but it will work just as well having a PS2 cable stick into it while living inside a small box with a USB cable connecting to whatever.

mainboards see it as USB, win2k has no idea it's not USB - in fact, if no keyboard is attached to it, it still shows up as a USB keyboard, it's just hard to type on.

hoping to get kishy to try it out shortly - see if it is useful yet.
dfj

[Morning Song]

yup - is a PS2 passthrough - so it only requires replacing the terminal's cable with somthing it can eat.
 My current prototype sits inside the board, and plugs straight onto the IBM controller, but it will work just as well having a PS2 cable stick into it while living inside a small box with a USB cable connecting to whatever.

I actually meant more... like, hook up your thingy inside the board, plug a USB cable into that...then one of those passive USB->PS/2 adapters like the ones that come with USB keyboards. For things like ridiculous NKRO, and poweron-with-spacebar, without the problems of using the keyboard directly on PS/2.

Morning Song I noticed the cord you sent along has a bit of a loose fitting PS/2 plug. If you still have issues once you get it back, slightly bend the shell so it fits in tighter and I suspect all will be well again.

Ooh... I'd noticed that during some of my testing, but i wasn't aware i could fix it. I'll futz with that when i get it back.

But if dfj does send you an adapter, I wouldn't mind you holding onto my keyboard for another couple of days. I have a personal interest in his little project working.

[dfj]

nkro and wake on spacebar currently work over USB just fine.

Out of the teensy comes a USB cable - the other end plugs into your computer as any USB cable.
  Rumours you might have heard regarding 6 character limits and such are not our problem.

[Morning Song]

nkro and wake on spacebar currently work over USB just fine.

Out of the teensy comes a USB cable - the other end plugs into your computer as any USB cable.
  Rumours you might have heard regarding 6 character limits and such are not our problem.

My motherboard doesn't like powering on from USB

But fair enough. I was just curious if it was something that was feasible.

[dfj]

My motherboard doesn't like powering on from USB

But fair enough. I was just curious if it was something that was feasible.

ugh, sleep, suspend - and 'turn on'  - power on and suspend are a bit tricky since these boards draw well over 100mW, but sleep is different, likely can wake from sleep.
  Works on my machine to boot, as well - I think. I'll need to test that more, but it is something that can be implemented at a later date, likely - via a firmware update.

  I'll add it to the 'desired reliable features' list.

dfj.

[TexasFlood]

Yup - I have a working terminal mode 3 PS2 -> USB (with nkro supported).

I am testing it for a couple more days, and doing some superficial tidying, then trying to get samples into the hands of interested folks to try out. (i.e. terminal freaks)
  At present the converter is based on a teensy++ (2.0, from PCJR, the maker) which, while overkill, gives us lots of room to add alternate keymappings, macros and such.
  Been using it on text solidly for the last day, and did a bit of gaming on it last night  too.
  Going to open it up for a limited 'alpha' in a couple days - see what features folks want most, next, etc...

I also will need to throw together a decent well-photographed tutorial on installing it nicely into the case of a terminal board.

kinda chuffed, but kinda tired,
dfj

I barely got to use mine before hitting the road and not home yet.  Unfortunately that wasn't all I hit, hit a deer yesterday, big chunk of my front bumper gone, hood dented, A/C out.  Anyway, it was a pleasure to type on, although not yet hooked up to anything, and I love the push button two level adjustable feet.  Let me know if I can help with testing.  I would still love to see this thing hooked up to my T60, :biggrin:.