Kittens on the keys?

Model M takes about 112mA (supposedly 100x more current than a modern PS/2 keyboard), the PS/2 port should be willing to provide up to 275mA, but I gather some modern machines are unwilling ...

I must grab one ...

I believe it was George Orwell who pointed out the posher the restaurant, the viler the kitchen.

My Windows key pops up the Applications menu in Ubuntu. Can't recall if it does that by default or if I configired it like that. I must keep better records.

I once got a used PS/2 (computer) that had been in an agricultural store. It was literally 25% full of feed stuff!

My PDP-11 came from a feed mill in Norfolk, but it was just a little rusty.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "ARWadsworth" saying something like:

I did map one of 'em on the US laptop to the pound symbol, which I suppose was sometimes handy. I should get around to doing the same with this model M, maybe using the scroll-lock key; it'd save me typing 'quid' everywhere :-)

cheers

Jules

Yes, I suspect that some modern motherboards fare better than others. It might be that my keyboard's drawing more than it should due to age- related problems too (or that the early ones such as mine are actually a little more power-hungry than later M's)

Just make sure you get an "intelligent" one - it's hard to tell from a lot of ads out there whether the thing for sale is just a dumb convertor or not (and some folk will try to sell you a dumb convertor claiming it'll work)

cheers

Jules

What does an intelligent one do? I have what I'm sure must be a 'dumb' converter (99p off ebay) to use an old PS/2 keyboard with my laptop or my son's Playstation, and it works fine?

David

There's USB compatible intelligence inside your modern keyboard, the 99p dumb adaptor merely sorts the interwiring out.

Older PS/2 mice, keyboards and KVMs don't have this so need the external USB smarts.

With more modern (how modern I don't know, but I suspect anything after the late 1990s) keyboards, the keyboard has the intelligence to work out what kind of interface it's connected to (PS/2 or USB) on the main system and switch to using the correct protocols and voltages. A 'dumb' convertor is just an adapter between connection types and removes the need to change cables; a modern keyboard with a PS/2 connector plugged into a PS/2 port on the main system will run in "PS/2" mode, and if plugged into a USB port on the main system (via a dumb convertor) will switch to "USB mode"

Most (and maybe all) Model M's pre-date USB, so all they know is PS/2 voltages and protocols - hence the need for an intelligent convertor to do the translation to USB; the convertor looks like an old PS/2 port to the keyboard, and looks like a USB keyboard to the main system.

(I've no idea if ultra-modern keyboards with USB plugs at the end of their cables lack PS/2 functionality - I've never tried that, and I'm not sure if you can get intelligent USBPS/2 convertors that work in the "other direction")

cheers

Jules

CTRL+Esc. Does the same thing as the Windoze key

You explained that in about 10% of the words that I did, and did it far better :-)

In message , geoff writes

Some years ago, before broadband was common, my company laptop had a Remote Access System using a dial-up modem. All I had to do was click a button and hey-presto, I was connected to the company servers.

One day, I got a phone call from the local emergency services asking me to stop dialling 999 or face severe penalties. I explained that I was not calling them at all but they were insistent. It turned out that the RAS client was American and the default telephone number, used when the pre-programmed number was unreachable, was 999!

Our tech guys had never realised this and I got a mention in dispatches for bringing this to their attention. They never did anything about the problem though!