What number of occasions have you ever discovered your self working in your MacBook, solely to have to leap over to your Macintosh Basic to test on one thing? Most likely zero, however in case you had ever been in that scenario, you may need been aggravated that you simply wanted to maneuver to work with a special bodily keyboard and mouse to work together with every machine. That sort of turns your entire “bicycle for the thoughts” setup into one thing extra like a damaged curler skate.
This drawback has been solved on trendy MacBooks and iPads operating a latest model of macOS or iPadOS by a function referred to as Common Management that was launched just a few years in the past. It permits a single mouse and keyboard to manage a number of Apple gadgets. However for some unimaginable purpose, Apple didn’t see match to help 35 12 months outdated machines just like the Macintosh Basic once they designed Common Management (such a evident instance of deliberate obsolescence).
The Arduino interfaces with the Basic by way of the Apple Desktop Bus protocol (📷: Bart Jakobs)
{Hardware} hacker Bart Jakobs was not about to take this mendacity down, so he determined to construct a system referred to as MacFriends that brings Common Management-like capabilities to Macs from the final century. That’s proper, with the assistance of an Arduino Nano, your trendy Mac can lastly be used as an enter gadget on your Macintosh Basic.
The Arduino is linked to the fashionable laptop by way of USB. Software program written by Jakobs displays the keyboard and mouse for inputs. When the mouse strikes all the way in which to the left aspect of the display screen, it triggers MacFriends to modify to supplying the inputs to the Macintosh Basic as an alternative of the host machine. Each mouse and keyboard inputs are transformed right into a format acceptable to be used with the Apple Desktop Bus protocol. These alerts are delivered to the Macintosh Basic by way of a PS/2 connection, which is pushed by the Arduino’s GPIO pins.
Jakobs notes that the code will not be fairly production-ready, however let’s be sensible. If you’re attempting to manage a Macintosh Basic from a contemporary MacBook, there isn’t any want for the phrase “manufacturing” to return into the image. So long as it really works properly sufficient usually, you ought to be good to go. If you wish to strive it for your self, Jakobs has offered the entire code in a GitHub repository.
