Re: PS/2 - USB Adaptor for keyboard

[Celejar <celejar@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 02:14:43 -0600
"Russell L. Harris" <rlharris@oplink.net> wrote:

> * Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> [070302 01:42]:
> > I'm trying to use a simple (cheap) PS/2 keyboard with a laptop which
> > has no PS/2 ports. There are various PS/2 - USB available all over the
> > internet; I bought a cheap one on Ebay. It is a very simple little
> > thing, and I don't think it has any sort of electronics inside, and it
> > doesn't seem to work. The keyboard is not recognized at all, neither in
> > the console nor in X, it doesn't appear in the output of lsusb, and it
> > isn't recognized by MS Windows either. Does anyone know anything about
> > these things? Do they only work with certain types of keyboards? Do I
> > need to configure anything in software? Should I suspect that mine is
> > defective?
> 
> Correct; there are no electronics in the PS2->USB adapter.  A few
> years back, a PS2 adapter often was included with a USB mouse.
> 
> It is likely that all you need to do is use the BIOS setup screen to
> enable the external keyboard and/or mouse.  Once that is done, X and
> Window$ should see them.

Thanks. I did take a quick look into the BIOS and didn't see any such
setting; I might have missed something. I'll take another look when I'm
back at that machine.

> Also, any USB keyboard -- including keyboards for the Macintosh --
> should work fine with your laptop.  I am using a Macintost USB
> keyboard with my desktop PC; it appears to be of much higher
> mechanical quality than anything else I saw in the PC department of
> the computer store.
> 
> RLH

I could try that, but I have a specific PS/2 keyboard that I'd like to
get working (it has foreign language characters printed on the keys in
addition to the english ones, and similar USB models that I saw are
more expensive).

Thanks,
Celejar

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