From the forums: Using a PS/2 keyboard with Raspberry Pi GPIOs #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi
Thanks to Drew for sharing this post with us! Check out more here and in the Adafruit forums.
Why?
Maybe you want to free up a USB port (especially on Pi-zero or Pi-aplus).
Maybe you have piles of PS/2 keyboards gathering dust (perhaps one is a much treasured Model-M).
Maybe you are writing your own OS and want keyboard access without having to write a full USB stack.
Background
The Raspberry Pi is great for hacking with, but it is hard to get keyboard input without using USB. If you’re running Linux that’s not a problem, but if you’re running your own operating system it’s a problem, especially if you don’t feel like writing a complete USB stack.
The PS/2 keyboard interface is a very simple serial protocol, so I wanted to design a board that would take a traditional PS/2 keyboard and convert it to something that could be read with standard Pi GPIOs.
This will be useful for the Advanced OS course I teach, as it is easy to get video output going but until now we couldn’t get keyboard input, only serial port which can be a bit awkward (you need another machine around to use your OS).
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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!