Ok, this could prove to be awesome.
And it’s one of the many reasons I believe the mighty Topher Kessler doth rock on a regular and efficient basis.
Over on CNET, Kessler’s penned a cool hack to use your old Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) keyboard with your current USB-equipped Mac.
The hack centers around tech hobbyist Scott Vanderlind’s find that by adding a small USB controller to the keyboard, he could tap into the device’s ADB connection and send it over USB to any modern device, where it works quite well.
For hobbyists, adapters like the Griffin 2001-ADB iMate are not the only options for converting your ADB keyboard to USB. Granted, there’s a small amount of soldering, a Teensy USB controller, and a quick flash of the keyboard’s firmware to enable the ADB-to-USB conversion of the keyboard’s output.
Still, the process seems to work pretty well with the only hiccup being the need to continually hold the Num Lock key for the number pad to work.
Head on over, take a gander and if you’ve found a cool hack of your own that you’d like to share, please let us know in the comments.