[rescue] Re: The onyx godness

[James Lockwood]

On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, Eric Webb wrote:

> On Friday 10 January 2003 12:24 am, Gavin Hubbard wrote:
> > Such a thing already exists. Sun sells part X465A (Sun Interface Convertor)
> > so you can use a PC keyboard/mouse on your Sun system. I personally use one
> > to control my E3500 from a standard Apex KVM.
>
> Yeah, several people make such an adapter.  The point was to build it myself
> though...

This can be done without any custom hardware at all.  The pre-USB Sun
keyboard (and mouse) interface is vanilla async serial.  Both normally run
at 1200bps but the port can be clocked higher for better responsiveness
(my mice run at 4800)..

The easiest way to do this (assuming you wanted to connect a PC kb or
mouse) would probably be to start with an old PC.  Even an original XT
could easily keep up with translating PC keymap codes to Sun and sending
them through the serial port.

For more information on connecting other serial gear to the Sun kb/mouse
port, see the excellent documentation supplied with Toerless Eckert's
DoubleX.

-James