Hi! This is Alice. I’ll be helping out with some of the engineering work at BMOW.

Version 0.3.6 for the ADB-USB Wombat is now available. The Wombat is a bidirectional ADB-to-USB and USB-to-ADB converter for keyboards and mice. Connect modern USB keyboards and mice to a classic ADB-based Macintosh, Apple IIgs, or NeXT, or connect legacy ADB input hardware to a USB-based computer running Windows, OSX, or Linux.

The new version fixes a small bug with the Power Key in ADB to USB mode. This fix enables the Wombat to register the Power Key being held at the same time as another key, allowing it to be useful in different mappings such as a Fn key.

The Wombat is available now on the BMOW store!

The Wombat ADB-USB input converter is now back in stock at the BMOW Store. Thanks for everybody’s patience while we waited out multiple delays on delivery from my manufacturing partner. There’s now plenty of Wombat stock at BMOW HQ, so they won’t be selling out again any time soon.

What’s a Wombat? The Wombat is a bidirectional ADB-to-USB and USB-to-ADB converter for keyboards and mice, and was developed by Steve Chamberlin here at Big Mess o’ Wires. It can connect modern USB keyboards and mice to a classic ADB-based Macintosh, Apple IIgs, or NeXT, or connect legacy ADB input hardware to a USB-based computer running Windows, OSX, or Linux. For more details, please see the product description page.

 
Global Shipping is Back!

After ten days of confusion at the hands of US Customs and Export Control, BMOW global shipping is back! They’ll be celebrating from Calgary to Cardiff, Melbourne to Madrid. I never did get a clear explanation of exactly what went wrong, but some post office processing facility at the San Francisco International Distribution Center screwed up in a big way, resulting in thousands of international packages being incorrectly returned to sender from shippers all over the US West Coast. What a mess.

I’ve taken this opportunity to adjust the international shipping rates to reflect the latest USPS First Class Package International service rates. Pop quiz: what do France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Gibraltar, Hungary, Iceland, Lithuania, Poland, and Portugal all have in common? They’re nine countries whose USPS rate group offers cheaper shipping than most other international destinations outside North America. Why those nine countries? I really have no idea.

Can you guess what distinction is shared by Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan? Shipping to those six countries is more expensive than most of the rest of the world. I can sort of understand Australia and New Zealand due to their relative geographic isolation, but why single out Brazil or Japan? The lesson I’ve learned from these past ten days is never question the post office.

I’m looking forward to shipping lots more BMOW hardware to enthusiasts everywhere.

Acrylic cases for the BMOW Floppy Emu and ADB-USB Wombat are back in stock. If you’ve been waiting for one of these, your wait is over. The Floppy Emu cases were held up longer than expected due to international shipping delays, which continue to be a major challenge. The Wombat cases are made locally, but the manufacturer has mostly transitioned to making emergency medical protective equipment and is processing other work slowly. To compound the problem, the first delivery of Wombat cases were somehow mis-cut at 15/16ths the correct size. The whole batch had to be thrown in the trash, and new cases re-cut. Sometimes even the simple things are hard!

New firmware 0.3.5 is now available for the ADB-USB Wombat! The Wombat is a bidirectional ADB-to-USB and USB-to-ADB converter for keyboards and mice. Connect modern USB keyboards and mice to a classic ADB-based Macintosh, Apple IIgs, or NeXT, or connect legacy ADB input hardware to a USB-based computer running Windows, OSX, or Linux.

Firmware version 0.3.5 adds some new items to the feature list:

• Support for remapping the Power Key for ADB-to-USB mode. This was a frequently requested feature from people using an old Apple Extended Keyboard with a modern PC or Mac. The default is unmapped, but you can use the Custom Keymap Tool to map it to a function key or anything else.
   
• Separate keycodes for left and right side Shift, Control, and Option keys. Now if you wish, you can configure the left modifier keys to have different behavior than the right modifiers. I’d thought this was already happening before, but some extra keyboard magic was needed to make it work. The Apple Extended Keyboard II supports separate left/right side modifiers, but the AEK I doesn’t. If you’ve got an Appledesign keyboard or other model, let me know how it behaves.
   
• Option to disable mouse-wheel arrow keys. When using a USB mouse on an ADB computer, there’s no equivalent of the mouse wheel. The Wombat converts mouse wheel rotations into keypresses of the up/down arrow key, which accomplishes a similar result in most software. If it causes problems, this arrow keys behavior can now be disabled using the Custom Keymap Tool.

You’ll find firmware 0.3.5 in the Downloads section of the Wombat page. And if you don’t have a Wombat yet, they are available and shipping now.

The Wombat ADB-USB input converter is now back in stock at the BMOW Store. Head there to get yours now.

Wombat what? The Wombat is a bidirectional ADB-to-USB and USB-to-ADB converter for keyboards and mice, and was developed by Steve Chamberlin here at Big Mess o’ Wires. Connect modern USB keyboards and mice to a classic ADB-based Macintosh, Apple IIgs, or NeXT machine. Or connect legacy ADB input hardware to a USB-based computer running Windows, OSX, or Linux. No special software or drivers are needed – just plug it in and go. For more details, please see the product description page.

Today I received a new batch of Wombat boards from my manufacturing partner. Too bad none of them work! Connected devices aren’t recognized, in either ADB or USB input modes. Oops.

After some lengthy investigation, I discovered that the main crystal oscillator speed on these new boards is about 3.69 MHz, but it should be 8.0 MHz. At 3.69 MHz the board will not work. But the oscillator seems to be an 8 MHz one (at least it has “8.0” in the part number stamped on it), and the associated capacitors and resistors measure roughly the same in-circuit values as a known-good board, so it’s unclear why I’m getting 3.69 MHz oscillation.

Problems happen, but this particular problem should have been caught by the testing procedure that I designed, before the boards were ever shipped to me. I re-ran the test procedure here, using a copy of the test harness that I previously gave to the manufacturer, and sure enough all five of the boards I tried failed the test. So either there’s some discrepancy between how I’m testing and how they’re testing, or they did the tests incorrectly, or didn’t run the tests at all.

The hardware and the test process are identical to the previous three Wombat batches made by the same manufacturer, but the person overseeing the project changed this time.

This is my nightmare scenario, and I’m not sure where to go from here. With some more bench time, I could probably determine exactly why the oscillation speed is 3.69 MHz. Perhaps these boards could be fixed with some hot air rework and component replacement, but who’s going to do that? I’m not about to desolder and replace crystal oscillators on hundreds of boards by hand, to fix someone else’s mistake. Returning the whole batch for rework in China would be prohibitively expensive in shipping and tariff costs. Even if the manufacturer agrees to stump for a complete re-do of the manufacturing, I’ll still be out roughly $750 for the cost of ICs I purchased and provided to them.