deskthority

Hey everybody! wonderful forum you guys got here.

I'm sitting with a wonderful Acer KB-101A that i found in a abandoned building along with some other keyboards. The cable was cut on them all, but most of them had pinouts on the pcb itself and where fixable, yet this Acer one doesn't, it apparently came with a 5pin din connector on the end. So if anybody could be able to tell me the pinout on it that'd be wonderful.

The colors on the plug that goes to the pcb are Yellow, White, Orange, Brown and Red.

-Takk

Same advice for any PS/2 or AT keyboard: you'll have to figure this one out the hard way but it should be easy. You're looking for four wires: power, ground, data, clock.

1. Find an IC - any IC - on the board with a part number. 74xx and 8048 or 8049 are common.
2. Google the data sheet for that part number to figure out which is power and which is ground.
3. Use an ohmmeter or continuity meter to figure out which wires are power and ground. (Don't get these wrong).
4. With these ruled out, of the rest, one is clock and one is data. Keep trying until you get it to work!

Sometimes these have a reset line that is wired to nothing, or two grounds. The advice remains: find power, find ground, and use trial and error to find data and clock. Good luck, post photos!

The Main microprocessor didn't bring me any results, its a multitech branded one. the remaining ICs are all strange, and dont bring results either. and sort of hard to identify anything in here, sadly.

Take a picture. Multitech is Acer, by the way - it's probably the actual microcontroller. And, the "strange" ICs probably have actual identifying marks that will help you.

Power and ground pins also tend to be at corners of the chip, by the way.

Few tips if you cannot find a data sheet.

Ground on the pins will most likely be connected to the ground of the case ( sometimes) the outside of the connector( but this does you no good as its been cut, if there is shielding in the wire this may also be connected to ground. Look for a ground strip or similar inside the keyboard, the negative leg of a capacitor may also be tied to ground.

Power may be a thicker trace on the PCB when it connects to a pin, it may also have capacitor for smoothing thats another clue.

The rest of them are not so easy.

EDIT

Just quickly googled your keyboard, looks like it has XT and AT switch so it should be easy to convert to usb once we find the pins.

Chances are Red is VCC unless the PCB designer is a complete dick.


Chyros may be able to help he has a 101A

http://deskthority.net/review-f45/acer- ... 10545.html

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I sent Chyros a message, so perhaps the solution will be simpler than i thought.
I'll upload pictures of the board onto imgur and link to them here, the entire restoration process was quite fun, so you guys might like to see that as well. Just gotta do some last minute Christmas shopping first!

Peace ~

andrewjoy wrote: Chances are Red is VCC

I never take this for granted.

Takk: what switches does this KB-101A have? Looking forward to seeing some photos!

XMIT wrote:
I never take this for granted.

Oh i agree , i have seen a repair video of a PDP-11 PSU where some asshole at DEC put the 24v on black!

But if your testing , its a good place to start.

Hi everyone! I Spoke with Chyros and he agreed to get the pinout for me once he gets home from holidays. I didn't want to trace the connections down myself, as last time i did so i fried the microcontroller in another ALPS based Keyboard. so its just to be on the safer side of things as this keyboard is wonderful, and apparently quite rare too.

Do people still want pictures of it though?

Takk wrote: Do people still want pictures of it though?

Yes!

Takk wrote: Hi everyone! I Spoke with Chyros and he agreed to get the pinout for me once he gets home from holidays. I didn't want to trace the connections down myself, as last time i did so i fried the microcontroller in another ALPS based Keyboard. so its just to be on the safer side of things as this keyboard is wonderful, and apparently quite rare too.

Do people still want pictures of it though?

Si senor! Por favor!

Acers with the case design are lovely. I'd love to see its condition.

Henceforth, let it be knowne, ye old pintout of the Acer KB-101A:

PINTout, Chros? You must have something other than keyboards on your mind!

So let it be written, so let it be done

scottc wrote: PINTout, Chros? You must have something other than keyboards on your mind!

Yes, and I cannot get it; mine fridge is empty.

Methinks it is time for a spot of the old Ardbeg.

Btw: mind that the controller-side plug in that picture is shown from the UNDERSIDE.

Hey everyone! Firstly, let me say sorry for never posting those pictures I promised. I have been incredibly busy with moving, as well as other things. I followed the instructions I was given here (which I'm super thankful for!) And did indeed get the Acer running. Its super fun to type on, but certain switches seem to have taken damage from the keyboard being outside for so long. A majority of them where fixed by just pressing them a bit harder, but some are fully dead. All depending on ALPS blue prices on eBay I might get some replacements, otherwise I'll switch blue character ones with function key ones @!# replace the function keys with white switches I've got from a cheap donor board. I'll see tomorrow, I promise a picture series of the entire process too.

Test the switches for continuity with a multimeter to see if the switch itself at least makes contact. If they do, reflow the solder and see if that helps. The ones that don't; open them up and give them a clean (I have a video tutorial on how to do this here).

Necro-ing thread!

Let me start off by saying that I'm 100% a newbie when it comes to converting, so I apologize if my questions come off as idiotic, haha. I'm having a bit of trouble understanding this specific pinout. My kb-101AS has a broken connector, so I want to cut the end off and replace it with a another DIN5 or ps/2 "head".

My main point of confusion is this:
To my understanding, most DIN5s only have 4 wires, and then (sometimes) another wire which connects to a piece of metal on the mounting plate of the board (which I presume is a grounding wire, and I think connects to the outer casing of the DIN5 connector). But the KB-101a has 5 wires plus that grounding wire, so there are 6 wires in total. If I wanted to try to join it with another DIN5 or PS/2 - each of which only has 4 wires (or 5 if the DIN5 has one of those additional wires which connects a piece of metal on the plate) - I wouldn't be able to hook up all the wires together since there is a discrepancy in the number of wires each connector has.

I suspect that the KB-101a has 6 total wires because of the capability of being XT or AT. So my question is this: If my plan is to keep it in AT mode, does one of the wires not matter and I can basically ignore it? Also to chyros: in that picture you linked is it safe to assume that those pins representative of the basic DIN5 AT diagram?

And if so, would pin A on your picture be 3 on the diagram which would also be "reset"?

I hope I that makes sense - I honestly have very little idea of what I'm taking about... Any help would be very much appreciated!

update: I think mike and wingpad helped me figure it out!