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dsawchak t1_ivry0dy wrote

Reply to comment by BeardedZorro in 11 Year Old Unicomp Model M Keyboard by zstandig

My IBM Model M in one room is from 1992 (requires a funky USB adapter to power it, and drops out sometimes, but still works well). My Unicomp Classic in the other room is from 2017.

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markswam t1_ivu391u wrote

Good to know I'm not the only one with weird dropping out issues on a Model M. Mine's from 89. I eventually got annoyed with the USB adapter drop-out issue and relegated it to my file server, which has a PS/2 port.

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dsawchak t1_ivu5ke0 wrote

One thing that helped was attaching it to a powered USB hub, because the old Model Ms required more power than a typical USB port provides, I think.

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markswam t1_ivu6065 wrote

Interesting. I may have to try that. The converter I have made no mention of that, but I suppose it makes sense.

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floofcatfuzz t1_ivu86hy wrote

It’s not that USB can’t supply enough power, it’s that cheap USB-PS/2 adapters aren’t built to pass enough power through to the PS/2 side. The famous blue cube adapter was awesome, but it seems to no longer be made. You can still pay a lot for one here, however.

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markswam t1_ivudoch wrote

I had been using one of the Monoprice converters when I was trying to use it over USB, which supposedly has the same functionality as the blue cubes, but it seemed to struggle.

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floofcatfuzz t1_ivuo3xm wrote

I get very occasional drops of the key release events for alt or ctrl, but I’ve always blamed that on macos. Annoying to unplug/replug but quick to fix.

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dsawchak t1_iw04p9s wrote

There we go; TY for the clarification. That makes more sense.

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