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Most of us think of keyboards — even vintage ones — as being fairly standardized and interchangeable, but that isn’t the case for the IBM PCjr. Its keyboard was quite unlike most others of its time, which means that a PCjr without an original keyboard is pretty much a dust collector. That’s what led [Jozef Bogin] to create the KeybJr, a piece of hardware that allows one to use any AT, XT, or PS/2 keyboard with the IBM PCjr.
What was strange about the PCjr’s keyboard? From the outside it looked pretty normal, but it definitely had its own thing going on. For one, the PCjr keyboard operated over a completely different protocol than the other keyboards of the time. In addition, its connection to the host was either by IR, or via its own wired cable adapter.
The KeybJr solves this by using an Arduino-based board to turn inputs from other keyboards of the time into something the PCjr expects. These signals are sent out and received either over infrared, or by the PCjr’s “K” port for a wired keyboard link.
Why bother with the IR functionality? Well, the connector and pins on the PCjr are not very rugged, and sometimes they are damaged. In those cases, it is nice to have the option of using a normal (for the time) keyboard over the IR link. Vintage hardware is not always in perfect shape, after all. That’s why things like ATX power supply adapters for the PCjr exist.
Want to give it a shot? There is a GitHub repository for the KeybJr, and you can see it in action in a brief video, embedded below.
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