I'll bet the key logging use case is more things like barcode scanners that pretend to be keyboards. I remember that being a pretty common pattern back in the day where you loop your keyboard through your barcode scanner, and it would just type out barcodes that get scanned
The barcode scanners with PS2 pass thru do nothing but send the scan codes of the buttons. The computer doesn't even know whether it's coming from the keyboard or the scanner.
At work we had a similar device that we used to plug old serial barcode readers that were intended to be used with VT100 and similar terminals into PCs. I guess the "key logging" would be handy if you needed to go in the opposite direction, plugging a barcode reader with a PS/2 interface into a serial terminal.
I made one years ago to help my receptionist when she was typing out meeting minutes. Built her a stomp box of sorts with a rewind, play/pause and forward momentary switches (yes using effects pedal switches). Back in the XP/Vista days Media Player would recognise real serial commands.
so I built something like this for my own uses. Keyboard emulation on modern windows is basically impossible without writing a kernel driver, so instead I have a teensy programmed to appear as a keyboard and a serial port. you send commands to the serial port, and it types the keys. It works well, and fun fact: I've used it to sorta-TAS games (for the Death Generator) And yes, it IS a nightmare. Timing is always a nightmare, so my scripts are always like "send key x, wait half a second, send key y, wait another second, send key z, wait 5 seconds, send key a, wait a half second, take a screenshot".
That's hilarious! I never really thought about how you do that for the death generator but that makes perfect sense. I've dabbled in a few different software input programs and none of them are able to be recognized by everything because of one weird edge case or another.
@@frogz if it's not enough, then I go back and run it again with longer delays! For some software, it's so picky that I have to make it interactive, where it takes screenshots and compares them to know when to type, but generally I try to avoid that for simplicity
@@TechTangents Shelby.. ARS usb2isa-r ... allows you to connect, for example, a vintage Sound Blaster SB16 ISA (and his OPL3)... to a modern computer USB..... or any other ISA device actually...
I wonder if a thing like this was used in those mass PC testing labs back in the day. Like the ones Microsoft had when they were preparing win95 for release.
Very useful for devices that are not PC, or whose software cannot be altered. I think about cash registers and similar stuff, where you want to connect them to another system but you can legally alter them because they have seals and so on, and the only interface is the keyboard that is used to type things on them.
Industrial scales are a good example of such systems. They are often eventually updated with new control and logging PCs, but you don't want to change the main unit with the ADCs, as it is specific to the load cells and calibrated to work with the system. It is also often quite difficult to get new software on them, as they commonly use old philips mcus or similar stuff, besides the legal complications modding a scale readout would come with.
Very nifty device for industrial and home use. For added fun you could try chaining that idea with some acoustic coupler modems and do that across the room. Also using it to make audio files for scripts that way.
Not quite 68k! 68HC711 is a variant of the 68HC11 (the 7 specifying the chip has EPROM on board), a 6800-series, not 68000-series. A younger cousin, the 6801/6803 (with and without ROM), was used in many early arcade machines as well as the classic MPU-401 MIDI interface.
The 68HC11 is also the microcontroller we used at university for many of our classes. One of my favorite projects was building an LCD Clock... the 68HC11 had a mere 2048 bytes of EEPROM for programs. The LCD we had to interface with didn't have a serial or i2c backpack either, it needed a raw implementation in code to write to it. The teacher knew it was a struggle to make everything fit so they allowed the clock to be "initialized" over serial on startup so that we didn't need to build any clock setting routines. Where I had the most fun was making a clock version that could be set by applying some compression and "creative spaghetti jumps". I was able to get a working clock with a date that was settable via some buttons on our dev boards. It was a neat controller. Biggest limitation was that the onboard EEPROM had 100-500 max write cycles and by graduation, mine needed quite a few retries to fully program successfully.
ESPECIALLY if it first wrote a program in basic that acts as an software interface to dump hex files to files so you're not limited to ascii's base set
I can see it sending commands to PLCs, like set it up with a PC, but then connect a barcode scanner to send product data to a PLC over 232 or 485. 485 is still used a lot in industrial settings!
Oh yeah, RS485 is used a lot. But probably not in a way that this adapter would understand. Profibus and Modbus are extremely common in industrial control systems, and to this day they run over RS485
Probably not Profibus or Modbus, but I've worked with barcode scanners, VFDs, and one laser measure that work on ASCII. I could theoricially see it working there. Of course there's purpose made tools for that though.
This device is used for sending and receiving keyboard commands long distances via RS485, RS422, and RS232, to PLCs, CNC machines, and other industrial control systems between buildings and control rooms. We use similar devices to extend keyboard, mouse, serial, and USB coms over fibre optic links between buildings. This is NOT a keylogger!
So it's interesting but I feel like the capabilities of this device have been far surpassed with even the most pedestrian of microcontrollers. You could probably use PIO to send ps/2 signals far faster than the M68k on this thing can manage. That goes without saying all the embedded storage capabilities of a modern microcontroller and at a tiny fraction of the price.
As this is a 6800, not a 68k, you're even more right. A random ATtiny or PIC could give this a run for its money, and I suspect that's exactly what's in later revisions of the device.
some years ago, we were playing an MMORPG with a very strict anti-cheat program. We can't run our "macro" tools. This device would've been an awesome tool for botting. We ended up modding an actual mouse and keyboard, wiring it up with an arduino so we can control it externally without introducing any programs into the computer running the game that would otherwise caught by the anti-cheat program 🤣 Fun times! Today, I can still find use for that. There is a small community that tries to teach AI to play a game through deep learning. Instead of direct software hook, I would probably use this KeyAT so that the AI machine would be totally independent with the gaming hardware and use OpenCV through a capture card or even camera. It is a long shot but at least I know this hardware stuff exist and could use it if I ever find a time 🤣
The 68HC711 is a 68HC11 variant. That thing's 8-bit. Which makes sense, a PS/2 is effectively an I2C bus and RS-232 is … RS-232. This is the kind of thing people do with Arduinos and the like all the time, but if you're looking for industrial control, you're going to want a packaged widget with support , etc.
My first thought: This device is made so you can use a modern keyboard on an vt100 Terminal (yes, i still have one around, an DEC vt180 which actually could also run CP/M software natively if I owned the expansion board with more memory and a disk controller).
Take it to a new level. Couple it to a Lantronix UDS-1100 Ethernet Serial Server. With their Comm Port Re-director software, you can have a Windows computer serial port anywhere on your network. Remote control for your computer keyboard anywhere on your network.
i once forgot to bring a mouse and keyboard to my vacation for the pc (without any os but i had an linux mint usb drive on me) but had a pi 4 on me and a touchscreen that was missalignd badly and my laptop then i calibrate the touch over the pi as an usb gadged and it worked
0:58 idk whats funnier, the fact that they didnt change the design of the webpage at all over all these years or the fact that they have an up to date copyright period which means they did update the webpage but never bothered to do anything that isnt changing those two last digits lmao
So now you need to combine this with your massive recording system, to make a multi-station kvm remote control. If you want me to help you make a 16x keyboard switch... I think it could be done rather simply with a few 4067 ic's and an arduino to control it.
You can adapt PS/2 to USB but most modern keyboards no longer have PS/2 mode via a passive adapter possible since they use more advanced polling etc than originally, idk if there are active adapters yet.
Shelby.. ARS usb2isa-r .... allows you to connect, for example, a vintage Sound Blaster SB16 ISA (and his OPL3)... to a modern computer USB??..... or any other ISA device actually....
Edit wont run because this version requires qbasic to start in edit mode. If you want an EDIT that works by itself, grab the one from windows 95, it's small, starts faster and works alone.
Imagine all the setup scripts you could automate with this! For every installer that lacks an unintended mode. I bet this could even be adapted to older non-PCs, especially since some of them did just use serial for keyboard.
While cool, it seems rather pricey by todays standards. Very similar has been in my pile of todo projects so I can remote control old and/or esoteric computers from a more modern one. Kinda like a simplified ipkvm.
Given how hard it is to get ahold of any pi except a pico right now... you might be the only one who thinks it would be under $10 ;-) I certainly agree a hobbyist making their own could save money though.
They still detect them, such as through being too consistent with timings. I suppose you could have an arms race of sorts, figuring out how much randomisation you can do while still being effectual, but I have to imagine big-data analysis would still reveal the pattern after enough playing.
@@procactus9109 Difficult? Not particularly. I've written a PS/2 interface module. I would suggest, though, that while it may not be worth more than $40 to _you,_ that that's not a realistic price point for something like this. That might mean the product is inherently not economically feasible. Or, the target market isn't you. I don't know how often you price parts, but if you were to try to build this yourself, there's no way you would get all the components for $15. Heck, just a DB25 port is a few bucks. If you use a cheap plastic project case, and don't count shipping, you might be able to get all the parts for $40. If you were buying this as a kit from a company that was mass-producing them, and therefore buying all the components from second (or third) source vendors in large quantities, then sure, $15 is _maybe_ reasonable. If that company had to contract or hire a programmer, keep some cash aside for returns and replacements, test the product on more than , write the manuals, market it, and particularly, if they have a support department, then the cost is going to go WAY up. This isn't a hobby DIYer's kit, where the labor is free and support is a link to Discord. It's going to be bought mainly by industrial organizations that need their "smartest computer guy" on the factory floor to be able to call in and have them walk through how to set up a serial port. They're going to expect a replacement box if there's a surge that blows out this one. The correlation between the price of goods, as purchased through Alibaba, and the price of a finished product is non-existent. They have very little to do with each other in the real world. It's one line item in the spreadsheet, along with the time to develop, test, certify, document, support, and warranty the product. Or you could get one from eBay, from a seller who bought them by the 10,000s from some nameless OEM, and it _might_ work, _might_ come with documentation which _might_ be in English, it _might_ last six months, but will never be traceable to a culpable human being if something goes wrong. For somebody tinkering with old computers, that's probably fine. But you weren't the goal when this thing was created.
@@nickwallette6201 i understand your point. I appreciate the way you explained that... You're mostly correct about the assumptions about me, I view it from a hobbyist point of view, and I really have no idea how to price my own projects... Food for thought, cheers
I'll bet the key logging use case is more things like barcode scanners that pretend to be keyboards. I remember that being a pretty common pattern back in the day where you loop your keyboard through your barcode scanner, and it would just type out barcodes that get scanned
The barcode scanners with PS2 pass thru do nothing but send the scan codes of the buttons. The computer doesn't even know whether it's coming from the keyboard or the scanner.
Also, modern bluetooth barcode scanners are pretend to be a keyboard, and just type in the scanned barcode.
it hasn't changed, brand new modern barcode scanners still do the same thing. kinda funny
At work we had a similar device that we used to plug old serial barcode readers that were intended to be used with VT100 and similar terminals into PCs. I guess the "key logging" would be handy if you needed to go in the opposite direction, plugging a barcode reader with a PS/2 interface into a serial terminal.
I made one years ago to help my receptionist when she was typing out meeting minutes. Built her a stomp box of sorts with a rewind, play/pause and forward momentary switches (yes using effects pedal switches). Back in the XP/Vista days Media Player would recognise real serial commands.
so I built something like this for my own uses. Keyboard emulation on modern windows is basically impossible without writing a kernel driver, so instead I have a teensy programmed to appear as a keyboard and a serial port. you send commands to the serial port, and it types the keys. It works well, and fun fact: I've used it to sorta-TAS games (for the Death Generator) And yes, it IS a nightmare. Timing is always a nightmare, so my scripts are always like "send key x, wait half a second, send key y, wait another second, send key z, wait 5 seconds, send key a, wait a half second, take a screenshot".
half a second? that is an eternity, what if it is really 501 ms? or 499 ms that you need??
That's hilarious! I never really thought about how you do that for the death generator but that makes perfect sense. I've dabbled in a few different software input programs and none of them are able to be recognized by everything because of one weird edge case or another.
@@frogz if it's not enough, then I go back and run it again with longer delays!
For some software, it's so picky that I have to make it interactive, where it takes screenshots and compares them to know when to type, but generally I try to avoid that for simplicity
@@TechTangents try automating and hacking games that actively monitor where inputs are coming from
@@TechTangents Shelby.. ARS usb2isa-r ... allows you to connect, for example, a vintage Sound Blaster SB16 ISA (and his OPL3)... to a modern computer USB..... or any other ISA device actually...
"spooky actions at a distance" You've solved quantum mechanics for vintager computers!
I wonder if a thing like this was used in those mass PC testing labs back in the day. Like the ones Microsoft had when they were preparing win95 for release.
Very useful for devices that are not PC, or whose software cannot be altered. I think about cash registers and similar stuff, where you want to connect them to another system but you can legally alter them because they have seals and so on, and the only interface is the keyboard that is used to type things on them.
i think you mean CAN'T legally alter them...
Industrial scales are a good example of such systems. They are often eventually updated with new control and logging PCs, but you don't want to change the main unit with the ADCs, as it is specific to the load cells and calibrated to work with the system. It is also often quite difficult to get new software on them, as they commonly use old philips mcus or similar stuff, besides the legal complications modding a scale readout would come with.
Very nifty device for industrial and home use. For added fun you could try chaining that idea with some acoustic coupler modems and do that across the room. Also using it to make audio files for scripts that way.
We use them at work to connect barcode scanners to systems that only have RS-232. They are cool.
Not quite 68k! 68HC711 is a variant of the 68HC11 (the 7 specifying the chip has EPROM on board), a 6800-series, not 68000-series. A younger cousin, the 6801/6803 (with and without ROM), was used in many early arcade machines as well as the classic MPU-401 MIDI interface.
The 68HC11 is also the microcontroller we used at university for many of our classes.
One of my favorite projects was building an LCD Clock... the 68HC11 had a mere 2048 bytes of EEPROM for programs. The LCD we had to interface with didn't have a serial or i2c backpack either, it needed a raw implementation in code to write to it.
The teacher knew it was a struggle to make everything fit so they allowed the clock to be "initialized" over serial on startup so that we didn't need to build any clock setting routines.
Where I had the most fun was making a clock version that could be set by applying some compression and "creative spaghetti jumps". I was able to get a working clock with a date that was settable via some buttons on our dev boards.
It was a neat controller. Biggest limitation was that the onboard EEPROM had 100-500 max write cycles and by graduation, mine needed quite a few retries to fully program successfully.
god, that keyboard struggle is such a mood, if you've ever looked into one-handed keyboards and such before, that... sounds about close in price.
this thing could be sick for copy pasting text from modern pc to vintage pc
ESPECIALLY if it first wrote a program in basic that acts as an software interface to dump hex files to files so you're not limited to ascii's base set
I can see it sending commands to PLCs, like set it up with a PC, but then connect a barcode scanner to send product data to a PLC over 232 or 485. 485 is still used a lot in industrial settings!
Oh yeah, RS485 is used a lot. But probably not in a way that this adapter would understand. Profibus and Modbus are extremely common in industrial control systems, and to this day they run over RS485
Probably not Profibus or Modbus, but I've worked with barcode scanners, VFDs, and one laser measure that work on ASCII. I could theoricially see it working there. Of course there's purpose made tools for that though.
@@Jonoth The VFD could probably talk in either profibus or modbus. But there are other field buses too that I dont know much about
@@Skracken It probably could, but the plc it was connected to couldn't!
I can see this being used for a Zork TAS on real hardware
Or, combined with VGA capture, the most overcomplicated unattended windows install
This device is used for sending and receiving keyboard commands long distances via RS485, RS422, and RS232, to PLCs, CNC machines, and other industrial control systems between buildings and control rooms. We use similar devices to extend keyboard, mouse, serial, and USB coms over fibre optic links between buildings. This is NOT a keylogger!
Okay the wrist mounted keyboard looks awesome.
i think in the manual it said you can also send ~@ to turn off commands until sending 10 tildes
So it's interesting but I feel like the capabilities of this device have been far surpassed with even the most pedestrian of microcontrollers. You could probably use PIO to send ps/2 signals far faster than the M68k on this thing can manage. That goes without saying all the embedded storage capabilities of a modern microcontroller and at a tiny fraction of the price.
As this is a 6800, not a 68k, you're even more right. A random ATtiny or PIC could give this a run for its money, and I suspect that's exactly what's in later revisions of the device.
Huh, PS/2 keyboard and RS232 on a DE-9 on one device... sweet!
some years ago, we were playing an MMORPG with a very strict anti-cheat program. We can't run our "macro" tools. This device would've been an awesome tool for botting. We ended up modding an actual mouse and keyboard, wiring it up with an arduino so we can control it externally without introducing any programs into the computer running the game that would otherwise caught by the anti-cheat program 🤣 Fun times!
Today, I can still find use for that. There is a small community that tries to teach AI to play a game through deep learning. Instead of direct software hook, I would probably use this KeyAT so that the AI machine would be totally independent with the gaming hardware and use OpenCV through a capture card or even camera. It is a long shot but at least I know this hardware stuff exist and could use it if I ever find a time 🤣
You can probably do something very similar with USB4VC, which can do mouse and gamepads as well.
The 68HC711 is a 68HC11 variant. That thing's 8-bit. Which makes sense, a PS/2 is effectively an I2C bus and RS-232 is … RS-232. This is the kind of thing people do with Arduinos and the like all the time, but if you're looking for industrial control, you're going to want a packaged widget with support , etc.
Next video: testing if the cat remembers the names it was watching being printed.
I wonder if you still remember me 🤔
I was that congrats on 100k subs guy
It's like the predecessor to the Rubber Duckie.
My first thought: This device is made so you can use a modern keyboard on an vt100 Terminal (yes, i still have one around, an DEC vt180 which actually could also run CP/M software natively if I owned the expansion board with more memory and a disk controller).
Take it to a new level. Couple it to a Lantronix UDS-1100 Ethernet Serial Server. With their Comm Port Re-director software, you can have a Windows computer serial port anywhere on your network. Remote control for your computer keyboard anywhere on your network.
i once forgot to bring a mouse and keyboard to my vacation for the pc (without any os but i had an linux mint usb drive on me) but had a pi 4 on me and a touchscreen that was missalignd badly and my laptop then i calibrate the touch over the pi as an usb gadged and it worked
wow that is incredible
I got a space shuttle cable it's pretty dope if you ask me it allows one pc or server to control another pc
Monitor mode could be used for autofill or tab completion.
Would be pretty cool to interface the KeyAT with the drive selector so you didn't have to push a button to switch floppy disks.
Hah! Used those extensively at work back in the day for remote systems.
0:58 idk whats funnier, the fact that they didnt change the design of the webpage at all over all these years or the fact that they have an up to date copyright period which means they did update the webpage but never bothered to do anything that isnt changing those two last digits lmao
They probably printed that date label before year 2000! Lol! They had big plans for it in the future in guess!!!
So now you need to combine this with your massive recording system, to make a multi-station kvm remote control. If you want me to help you make a 16x keyboard switch... I think it could be done rather simply with a few 4067 ic's and an arduino to control it.
Yeah, you can pretty much do that with an arduino or even an esp8266 :-) it would even have logging and sending over WiFi then
That wrist keyboard looks like something I'd wear as an accessory rather than use it
This is neat.
You could try to use it as one-way file transfer solution XD
so it's basically a serial rubber ducky?
You can adapt PS/2 to USB but most modern keyboards no longer have PS/2 mode via a passive adapter possible since they use more advanced polling etc than originally, idk if there are active adapters yet.
Shelby.. ARS usb2isa-r .... allows you to connect, for example, a vintage Sound Blaster SB16 ISA (and his OPL3)... to a modern computer USB??..... or any other ISA device actually....
A man in the middle attackers dream.
You should pick up a Raspberry Pi Pico for $4. Programming in Python over USB, think it will suit you!
Thanks for the content.
Keep up the good work.
בס״ד
Now I see how those bots in World of Warcraft would farm all day long...
Edit wont run because this version requires qbasic to start in edit mode. If you want an EDIT that works by itself, grab the one from windows 95, it's small, starts faster and works alone.
my guess is that it's dropping keys cause it's meant for slower typing during programming
Imagine all the setup scripts you could automate with this! For every installer that lacks an unintended mode. I bet this could even be adapted to older non-PCs, especially since some of them did just use serial for keyboard.
Maybe it doesn't log keys if you have two keys depressed at the same time, or it lags somewhere in that regard.
I have an idea for a new video.
April 24, 2023 you can build a pc or pcgamer with windows server 2003
While cool, it seems rather pricey by todays standards. Very similar has been in my pile of todo projects so I can remote control old and/or esoteric computers from a more modern one. Kinda like a simplified ipkvm.
Neat
Are you looking for developers to help out with this project? I'm pretty alright with python and would love to help out!
When your ryzen board got ps2 and serial for i dont know what reason but its weird.
90's rubber ducky
am i the only 1 who thinks this could be replicated with a r pi for under $10 AND include usb+serial and physical buttons to set the internal mode?
Given how hard it is to get ahold of any pi except a pico right now... you might be the only one who thinks it would be under $10 ;-) I certainly agree a hobbyist making their own could save money though.
@@jercos touche, maybe i should go buy a few pico pi's at microcenter before they sell out, 25 left in stock
I think at those prices I'd rather try to do that with an arduino.
lol the python program sends "scandodes" :P
now use this to write a n undetectable wow bot, and make millions....
They still detect them, such as through being too consistent with timings. I suppose you could have an arms race of sorts, figuring out how much randomisation you can do while still being effectual, but I have to imagine big-data analysis would still reveal the pattern after enough playing.
Just duct tape a damn keyboard on your arm. Much much cheaper lol
Could controll a computer with arduino too lol
So one could use his/her c64 command the pc play doom or duke nukem 3d 😅 a.k.a don’t show to LGR 😂 COOL
Looks like $15 worth of parts to me. Not worth more than $40.
Australian dollars.
Well, I had all the parts, dropped them into a box, plugged stuff into the ports, and nothing happened.
Maybe this product is more than just parts?
@@nickwallette6201 are you suggesting it's difficult to code up a simple program suitable, it would take me longer to build it.
@@procactus9109 Difficult? Not particularly. I've written a PS/2 interface module.
I would suggest, though, that while it may not be worth more than $40 to _you,_ that that's not a realistic price point for something like this. That might mean the product is inherently not economically feasible. Or, the target market isn't you.
I don't know how often you price parts, but if you were to try to build this yourself, there's no way you would get all the components for $15. Heck, just a DB25 port is a few bucks. If you use a cheap plastic project case, and don't count shipping, you might be able to get all the parts for $40. If you were buying this as a kit from a company that was mass-producing them, and therefore buying all the components from second (or third) source vendors in large quantities, then sure, $15 is _maybe_ reasonable.
If that company had to contract or hire a programmer, keep some cash aside for returns and replacements, test the product on more than , write the manuals, market it, and particularly, if they have a support department, then the cost is going to go WAY up.
This isn't a hobby DIYer's kit, where the labor is free and support is a link to Discord. It's going to be bought mainly by industrial organizations that need their "smartest computer guy" on the factory floor to be able to call in and have them walk through how to set up a serial port. They're going to expect a replacement box if there's a surge that blows out this one.
The correlation between the price of goods, as purchased through Alibaba, and the price of a finished product is non-existent. They have very little to do with each other in the real world. It's one line item in the spreadsheet, along with the time to develop, test, certify, document, support, and warranty the product. Or you could get one from eBay, from a seller who bought them by the 10,000s from some nameless OEM, and it _might_ work, _might_ come with documentation which _might_ be in English, it _might_ last six months, but will never be traceable to a culpable human being if something goes wrong. For somebody tinkering with old computers, that's probably fine. But you weren't the goal when this thing was created.
@@nickwallette6201 i understand your point. I appreciate the way you explained that...
You're mostly correct about the assumptions about me, I view it from a hobbyist point of view, and I really have no idea how to price my own projects... Food for thought, cheers
I think if you're looking to get more info on what the processor is' doing you can use Donna Whisnat's disassembler. Github dewhisna slash gendasm
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