I obtained a vintage mechanical keyboard from 1988: Consul 262.9, made by Zbrojovka Brno. It features contactless Hall-effect switches (i.e. magnet sensors detect keypresses). It uses an XT protocol, so I had to create an adapter to make it usable for me. I could probably buy some cheap ready-made adapter, but where’s the fun in that?
Time to bring out the Arduino Leonardo! This newer Arduino features a HID-USB support, so it acts as a keyboard when connected over USB. All that remains is to connect the Arduino’s GPIOs to the keyboard’s pins and write a mapping layer between the “XT-keys” and “USB-keys”. Fun fact: this actually makes the keyboard programmable!
Here is the repository with the source code: xt-keyboard-adapter
4 replies on “Zbrojovka Brno Consul 262.9 adapted to USB”
Are there more details of this keyboard? I am guessing that you bought this from TNT. I can see that 262.9 has the Micro Switch SD-style switches, but that is it. Does this have a TESLA 2-of-N encoder (MH103/MH113) or microcontroller? MH3SS2 sensors like the other Consul keyboards? I figured it was time that I should give Zbrojovka Brno a page.
There is a MHB8748C microcontroller, but other than that, I don’t remember the details. Here are some photos from my cleanup:
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I can open it up again, if you’d be interested.
Hey, recently I won the same Consul 202.9 keyboard at auction, borrowed arduino leonardo from my friend, but couldn’t get keyboard working 🙁 I used code you posted on your git server, but with no success, maybe I’m wiring it wrong, would you mind helping me out please?
I can try 🙂 I’ll reach out to you via email.