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Comment by kalleboo | Hacker News Reader

All of the ADB to USB adapters I know of only support mice and keyboards and have internal firmware that maps to USB HID. You'd have to write a custom firmware to make a raw pass through to an emulator...

It would probably be easier to crack the software!

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I have a large collection of vintage Mac's and peripherals, with the largest quantity being the Apple Keyboard II [1]. Archive forums all suggest the Belkin ADB Adapter [2] but that has long since been retired. I would like to make my own, i know instructions exist for a raw passthrough.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Keyboard_II.jpg

[2]https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/hack-your-old-macs-adb-k...

I made a adb-to-usb adapter for my AEK2 using a teensy 2.0 and a cut up s-video cable. The TMK and QMK firmware have this functionality, but I used this firmware because it's much smaller and not a "kitchen sink" keyboard firmware:

https://github.com/gblargg/adb-usb

Unfortunately it's US-ANSI only so my pile of 4 french canadian AEK2s don't work very well with it.

The Griffin iMate was the most popular ADB-USB adapter from the time, and probably supports non-input devices (it would’ve been the only option at the time to make those dongles work).

Ah yeah, the ones that were sold at the time would work if you passed through USB to an emulator that supported USB hardware, or reverse-engineered their proprietary protocol. I was only thinking of the modern options when I wrote my comment.

You can get used Griffin iMates on eBay from time to time, but you'll want to solder in a new coin cell battery.

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