USB - PS2 Keyboard

Hello to everyone,

I kindly ask you this simply question, is possible to connect an extern keyboard to macbook pro? I did an experiment with my ps2 keyboard with an adaptor ps2/USB but Mac didn't ricognize anything.
There is the possibility that OsX didn't recognize the keyboard because isn't Apple?? I tested the adaptor with another computer and works perfectly.

Hope me to receive your replay as soon as possible,

Best Regards

Macbook pro 15,4", Mac OS X (10.6.4), 2,4GHz

Posted on Jan 25, 2011 11:33 AM

Reply
10 replies

Jan 27, 2011 8:05 AM in response to miki88

If you buy an Apple USB keyboard, it will work well. If you buy any other USB keyboard, it will probably work well.

I suspect your problem is that your PS/2 keyboard requires a PS/2 driver even when it's connected via a USB adapter, and there are no PS/2 drivers at all for Macs because no Mac ever had a PS/2 port.

Jan 27, 2011 12:50 PM in response to eww

...apart from, of course, all those hackintosh machines out there. There does seem to be some noise on the web about a kernel extension for PS/2 devices. The annoying thing is that there also seems to be plenty of anecdotal evidence of USB-PS/2 converters actually working.

I think it may be down to whether the USB-PS/2 converter reports a device descriptor that OS/X understands; I'm looking now at the results of running the XCode USB prober on a system with the converter attached, and the Keyboard and Mouse devices are both visible... but with an unknown vendor/product ID.

I've ordered a belkin USB adapter on the basis that I may get more joy from a better-known vendor. Will post my findings when the darned thing actually arrives.

Jan 27, 2011 2:02 PM in response to Jonathan Essex

...apart from, of course, all those hackintosh machines out there...


...which, of course, aren't Macs, and don't work like Macs.

Good luck with the Belkin adapter. I remember having a trackball twelve or fourteen years ago that came with a PS/2 plug and a USB adapter, and it worked just fine on my desktop Mac clone running OS 8 and OS 9. But I never used it in OS X, so I don't know whether it would have worked. I gave it away three or four years ago, along with the old desktop.

EDIT: Hmmm...now that I think about it some more, that trackball actually came with a USB plug and a PS/2 adapter that I didn't use. So no wonder it worked so well.

Message was edited by: eww

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USB - PS2 Keyboard

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