[geeks] peecee keybaord interfaces?

der Mouse mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG
Tue Feb 24 12:06:25 CST 2009


I've got a peecee-keyboard-wedge handheld barcode scanner that has a
nasty tendency to wedge.  Only fix I've found is a power-cycle.  But
that means crawling around to find the place it plugs in, and
power-cycling the keyboard too.

So I wanted to do something more external.  Opened it up ("security"
torx screws) and found the cable is not integral, though it's designed
to look that way; it's a 10P10C plug on the cable, jack on the device,
with a plastic piece that makes it "impossible" to unplug.  I got out
the meter and worked out the pinout of this cable.  Then I went
a-googling and managed to find a pinout for the DIN-5 connectors.

Perhaps fortunately, the outer two pins of the 10P10C do not seem to be
connected anywhere, so I can probably use a normal Ethernet cable end
to connect to the thing.

But it doesn't add up.  The pinout I found specifies pin 3 as reserved,
but the cable brings those pins to the device.  And the data pin is
wired through, but the device interposes into the clock pin (that is,
DIN5M pin 2 is wired to both DIN5F pin 2 and the scanner, while DIN5M
pin 1 and DIN5F pin 1 are wired separately to the scanner, rather than
being connected together).  This sounds backwards to me, but I don't
know the protocol - it clearly isn't the simple serial thing I'd
expect, or there'd be two data lines and no clock lines.

But before I proceeded further based on what may be dodgy information,
I thought I'd check with someone who has some real peecee keyboard
hardware clue.  Anyone here qualify (and have the leisure and
inclination for this)?

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