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616e6f6e

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  1. Allow me to throw out a solution that has so far allowed me to enjoy this keyboard under 10.11.6 without any drivers. Please note that I have not torture tested it. The solution is a two part hardware solution. The first part is a USB to PS/2 dongle in the vein of this one (https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Replacement-USB-Mouse-Adapter/dp/B0002ZQG24/ref=pd_sim_147_3?ie=UTF8&dpID=31jbfVfn29L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&psc=1&refRID=AFDHJ6KW1DG5Z5E5NS1R). Mine was one that I had lying around the house from an old mouse. In fact it is labeled with a mouse pictogram and is PC95 turquoise. The second half of the solution is a PS/2 to USB adaptor. The adaptor I used happens to be built into the KVM which I use to switch between my Mac and my Linux machine, but I think that a standalone USB to PS/2 adaptor would have worked the same. The PS/2 to USB adaptor is, as I understand it, somewhat of a “smart†adaptor insofar as it makes a PS/2 keyboard appear to be a HID compliant USB keyboard. On the other hand the USB to PS/2 adaptor is — as I understand it — a “dumb†adaptor which relies upon one’s USB keyboard being, if you will, bilingual, and speaking both USB HID and PS/2, with the bilingual keyboard not having a separate PS/2 plug and instead somehow allowing PS/2 signals to go out the USB connector when coupled with the dongle. My theory in approaching this was as follows. That Thermaltake, when designing this keyboard, started with an off-the-shelf chipset and then modified things. And, that the chipset provided for a USB HID-PS/2 bilingual keyboard. Further to that that Thermaltake did not eliminate the PS/2 side of things and instead left it in the off-the-shelf configuration for the keyboard. On the other hand, I saw Thermaltake as perhaps deviating from the off-the-shelf configuration on the HID side of things, mainly — I imagine — to add n-key rollover capability. As I understand the n-key rollover capability to be what confuses the Mac (but not Linux FWIW), I felt that Thermaltake leaving the PS/2 side of things off-the-shelf would be great: no Mac-confusing Thermaltake n-key implementation. With this theory in hand I tried it, and it seems to work. I have not — and probably will not get a chance to — fire up, say, Wireshark and see if the keyboard is sending out a somewhat different scan code stream operating PS/2 versus the out of the box USB way. I gather from this thread that Thermaltake’s n-key rollover approach involves something along the lines of sending two or more scancodes at once and that such confuses the Mac. If so, perhaps this does not happen at all in PS/2 mode? Finally, one one hand I can imagine the approach laid out here as meaning no n-key rollover functionality. FWIW, I purchased this keyboard for coding and for writing and therefore am not particularly worried about that. Having said that, I based on that which I have heard about PS/2 and n-key rollover, it it possible that when operating in PS/2 mode the chipset defaults provide some degree of n-key rollover? If so, does my PS/2 to USB-HID adaptor ignore it? In any case, if anyone else tries this I would be happy to hear their results.
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