Availability of Soarer's converters

[esr]

I expect to get a Model M 1391401 in the mail in a few days. I'd like to have the SDL-connector version of a Soarer's Converter to use it, but they're out of stock the only place I know how to find them, sold by orihalcon on eBay.

Elsewhere on the Web I found a Trello card implying that the "Soarer" who made these has disappeared and the IP status of his converters is murky. But that was dated some years back.

Someone please bring me up to date here.

1. Are Soarer's Converters still being made?

2.. If so, where else might I buy them other than from orihalcon on eBay?

3. If not, are the designs available to be fabricated and is anyone doing that?

4. If the answers to 2 and 3 are negative, what are my alternatives (if any)?

[an_achronism]

Unless I'm mistaken, Soarer wrote the code, "Soarer's converters" are just any physical converter made with his code on it. And Orihalcon happens to make very high quality converters using Soarer's code. It's not like Orihalcon sells converters assembled by Soarer, if that's what you're thinking.

You could make one yourself but finding bits to make an SDL one might be slightly more awkward than PS/2 or whatever. The code's still available. I'm not sure who else sells ready made converters though. I've been vaguely considering doing it myself, but they almost certainly wouldn't be quite as nice as Orihalcon's.

EDIT: Just saw you talking about it on Discord, so I guess you decided what to do already!

[esr]

The key piece of information I needed was that orihalcon builds them himself.

I guess that means the variation I want will be back in stock when he has time to build it.

I should be able to make do with the Sanoxy converter until then.

Thanks.

[fabs0]

I cound offer you a converter based on a teensy board, PS2 -> USB
Unfortunately I'm out of stock of boards, but new ones should arrive any day now.
I'm located in Germany but could ship worldwide (if it makes sense financially)

If you are interested, please PN me

[kelvinhall05]

1. Yes, but I would never buy a prebuilt one as they are overpriced trash. You can build one yourself in 5 minutes for a quarter of the price.

2. As mentioned above, DIY one. You just need a Pro Micro, the appropriate socket or connector for the board you're converting, and some wire/solder/soldering iron.

3. Yes viewtopic.php?t=8448 and just download firmware from the threads. Google to find pinouts of keyboards/connectors.

4. Well the answers to 2 and 3 are yes, but TMK is a solid alternative. Worst case scenario you map matrix and use QMK.

[raoulduke-esq]

4. Well the answers to 2 and 3 are yes, but TMK is a solid alternative. Worst case scenario you map matrix and use QMK.

Hasu did a great job handling all the various IBM boards with a single firmware:
https://github.com/tmk/tmk_keyboard/tre ... /ibmpc_usb

You can easily edit your layout for any of the IBM PC flavors here:
http://www.tmk-kbd.com/tmk_keyboard/editor/

I think QMK's converter section only provides for M122 using Set 3.

[kelvinhall05]

4. Well the answers to 2 and 3 are yes, but TMK is a solid alternative. Worst case scenario you map matrix and use QMK.

Hasu did a great job handling all the various IBM boards with a single firmware:
https://github.com/tmk/tmk_keyboard/tre ... /ibmpc_usb

You can easily edit your layout for any of the IBM PC flavors here:
http://www.tmk-kbd.com/tmk_keyboard/editor/

I think QMK's converter section only provides for M122 using Set 3.

Hence why I said TMK as a Soarer's alternative and mapping matrix (thus bypassing original controller and protocol) to use QMK. Never said to use QMK as converter firmware (although a friend of mine is working on porting TMK converters to QMK for the easier macros, among other things).

[Muirium]

Love Hasu and TMK and QMK too. But Soarer has them all beat, pants down, when it comes to macros. Always has done. Nobody does it better.

[kelvinhall05]

Love Hasu and TMK and QMK too. But Soarer has them all beat, pants down, when it comes to macros. Always has done. Nobody does it better.

Soarers is closed-source. Huge negative imo. Personally I don't think Soarers beats them "hands down" when it comes to macros but I haven't done advanced ones with either firmware so ymmv

[raoulduke-esq]

(although a friend of mine is working on porting TMK converters to QMK for the easier macros, among other things)

That's exceptionally exciting to me!

Agree- matrix mapping would be the worst case. I was just trying to give props to TMK and its superior handling of the old boards at the moment. Sounds like QMK is going to become a whole bunch better really soon.

[shallot]

I am said friend. The way I'm going about it is a pain in the arse (I want to use VIA so you don't have to reflash the converter to add stuff) which involves a lot of munging scancodes as QMK expects one "matrix" to work with - I'm hoping this won't slow the converter down too much. Thankfully, getting most of my actual physical keyboard projects out of the way, so I should be able to devote more time to this.

[Muirium]

I'd love to see QMK handle macros as elegantly and powerfully as Soarer does. I've never even written macros on QMK or TMK as I was put off by having to write your own code and then build the thing from source. Soarer's is an interpreter, so macros are very easily done, and rewritten live.

Xwhatsit's macro support was also very good. A bit fiddly, as he did it all in the GUI, but just almost powerful as Soarer's (just didn't have full file reloads / modal sets). If something like that could be brought to the VIA or QMK graphic interface, I'll quit my whining!

Speaking of interface: I really like QMK's web UI. Having to run an app locally always has support issues, longterm. Xwhatsit's GUI won't even run on the Mac any more, because of APIs changing over the years (and finally chip architecture). VIA will have those same issues ahead, as I understand.

[Coeus]

1. Yes, but I would never buy a prebuilt one as they are overpriced trash. You can build one yourself in 5 minutes for a quarter of the price.

Some people see value is a neat thing that has been professionally assembled. Yes, it may be sold for rather more than the cost of the parts but isn't that a business's right? I would bet the the difference between the cost of the parts to an iPhone (as paid by Apple, not as on the repair market) and the final selling price is rather more than for pre-built soarers converters.

[Coeus]

Hence why I said TMK as a Soarer's alternative and mapping matrix (thus bypassing original controller and protocol) to use QMK. Never said to use QMK as converter firmware (although a friend of mine is working on porting TMK converters to QMK for the easier macros, among other things).

I did try the ported XT converter in QMK and could not get it to work but that was several months ago. I also tried the original Soarer's code and of the three it was the least trouble to get to the point where it mostly worked but it didn't play nicely with a KVM switch I had and as the KVM and Soarer's code are closed source there wasn't much I could do there. So I am now running TMK and it has been fine.

[shallot]

I'd love to see QMK handle macros as elegantly and powerfully as Soarer does. I've never even written macros on QMK or TMK as I was put off by having to write your own code and then build the thing from source. Soarer's is an interpreter, so macros are very easily done, and rewritten live.

Xwhatsit's macro support was also very good. A bit fiddly, as he did it all in the GUI, but just almost powerful as Soarer's (just didn't have full file reloads / modal sets). If something like that could be brought to the VIA or QMK graphic interface, I'll quit my whining!

Speaking of interface: I really like QMK's web UI. Having to run an app locally always has support issues, longterm. Xwhatsit's GUI won't even run on the Mac any more, because of APIs changing over the years (and finally chip architecture). VIA will have those same issues ahead, as I understand.

VIA is just Electron, so no. It's literally a webapp running in a desktop wrapper.

[Coeus]

Elsewhere on the Web I found a Trello card implying that the "Soarer" who made these has disappeared and the IP status of his converters is murky. But that was dated some years back.

If you're interested in the legality of taking his code and making a converter from it, it would obviously depend on what license the code was released under. The code in binary form is definitely available on the Internet, though. It is not open source, though. If it works for you then great. It also allows changing quite a bit without having the source.

[kelvinhall05]

1. Yes, but I would never buy a prebuilt one as they are overpriced trash. You can build one yourself in 5 minutes for a quarter of the price.

Some people see value is a neat thing that has been professionally assembled. Yes, it may be sold for rather more than the cost of the parts but isn't that a business's right? I would bet the the difference between the cost of the parts to an iPhone (as paid by Apple, not as on the repair market) and the final selling price is rather more than for pre-built soarers converters.

They are not professionally assembled. They are built as cheaply as possible and fail frequently. Don't buy them. They are garbage.

[fohat]

1. Yes, but I would never buy a prebuilt one as they are overpriced trash.

I am not sure what you are talking about, but Orihalcon's pieces are of the highest quality.

When he started out he had to buy a large quantity of male SDL connectors and had to recoup some cost. His SDL-to-USB cables are immaculate. I haven't used those stupid coiled IBM SDL cables on a Model M in years.