Yeah... mine will be 25 years old next year. It doesn't even have the status LEDs that the later ones have. Still works great - only issue being a right-shift that sticks slightly if pressed too far toward the edge.
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 ...
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 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 :-)
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)
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?
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")
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!
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