USB PS2 Keyboard converter adapter worked fine in 10.5, issues in 10.6
I'm a mac user with a fetish for old IBM Model M clicky keyboards. After some sniffing around and buying a few cheap adapters that didn't work, I found this product on www.clickykeyboards.com :
http://www.clickykeyboards.com/index.cfm/fa/items.main/parentcat/11298/subcatid/ 0/id/124184
In short, it doesn't seem to work right with key modifiers in 10.6 whereas it did in 10.5
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The longer story with details...
In leopard, it worked like a charm. Most important to me of course was flexibility of layout in the modifier keys. Starting from the bottom left, standard mac layout is:
control ... option(alt) ... command(apple)
My keyboard (late 80's classic Model M) has:
ctrl ... [grey plastic] ... alt
...and the normal functionality you get when you plug in a standard 104-key windows keyboard to a mac by USB is:
ctrl = control
alt = option
windows = command
So I map as follows using the modifier keys remap function in the keyboard pane of sysprefs:
ctrl = control
alt = command (so it's in the same place that it would be on a mac keyboard 🙂
caps lock = option
And it worked beauty. The LED's for num/caps/scroll didn't do anything, which was fine, who needs them. And when I booted to WinXP via BootCamp, it also worked properly. F12 worked for both eject and dashboard, awesome.
Just got the new snow-kitty and the remap stopped working! All the keys on the board work as designed, but no matter how I map the modifier keys in SysPrefs, alt is locked to option, ctrl to ctrl, caps lock to caps lock, the LED's work again (weird), and I have no apple key! It's like the remap values I choose are getting overridden in hardware or something.
Anyone have any ideas? Could be the USB/PS2 converter needs a 10.6 driver, but I can't figure out who the manufacturer is...
Before anyone suggests it, using a newer keyboard is not under any circumstances a viable option 😀
http://www.clickykeyboards.com/index.cfm/fa/items.main/parentcat/11298/subcatid/ 0/id/124184
In short, it doesn't seem to work right with key modifiers in 10.6 whereas it did in 10.5
=======
The longer story with details...
In leopard, it worked like a charm. Most important to me of course was flexibility of layout in the modifier keys. Starting from the bottom left, standard mac layout is:
control ... option(alt) ... command(apple)
My keyboard (late 80's classic Model M) has:
ctrl ... [grey plastic] ... alt
...and the normal functionality you get when you plug in a standard 104-key windows keyboard to a mac by USB is:
ctrl = control
alt = option
windows = command
So I map as follows using the modifier keys remap function in the keyboard pane of sysprefs:
ctrl = control
alt = command (so it's in the same place that it would be on a mac keyboard 🙂
caps lock = option
And it worked beauty. The LED's for num/caps/scroll didn't do anything, which was fine, who needs them. And when I booted to WinXP via BootCamp, it also worked properly. F12 worked for both eject and dashboard, awesome.
Just got the new snow-kitty and the remap stopped working! All the keys on the board work as designed, but no matter how I map the modifier keys in SysPrefs, alt is locked to option, ctrl to ctrl, caps lock to caps lock, the LED's work again (weird), and I have no apple key! It's like the remap values I choose are getting overridden in hardware or something.
Anyone have any ideas? Could be the USB/PS2 converter needs a 10.6 driver, but I can't figure out who the manufacturer is...
Before anyone suggests it, using a newer keyboard is not under any circumstances a viable option 😀
Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.6.3)