Help and Frequently Asked Questions

My device isn't working!

First check your USB cable. 99% of problems are a bad cable or a cable that's made for charging but has no data lines connected. When I started building these I didn't know how common the charging-only micro-USB cables were, but I've heard from a lot of people that tried 1, 2, or more cables and all of them were charging-only. Monoprice and Amazon have tons of good cables for a few dollars.

With no keyboard plugged in, plug in just the device and check your USB listing. In Windows this is Device Manager (use View-Devices by Container), on Macs it's in System Profiler under USB, and Linux users can use lsusb. If the device is not listed, it's most likely a problem with the USB cable.

If the device shows up but your keyboard doesn't work, it's likely a problem with the keyboard cable or the keyboard itself. These things are 20+ years old and don't always work as well as they did when they came off the assembly line.

For ADB, make sure your ADB cable is good. S-Video cables might work but some are not wired the right way for ADB.

For Mac keyboards, make sure your cable is straight through. Same for Sun Type 5 keyboards with a detachable cable, ImageWriter cables won't work.

I can't flash firmware or a layout on macOS

If the DW Util app doesn't appear to be doing anything (click Flash and nothing happens), make sure you don't have any other apps running that take control of the keyboard like Karabiner. Close those and it should work.

Firmware flash doesn't work

If the dwfw utility says it can't find a bootloader, just keep running it and it should eventually work. Devices running ADB2USBv9 sometimes have this issue, it's fixed in v10 and up.

The NeXT mouse is really slow

Unfortunately the NeXT protocol and USB don't use the same scale for mouse movements. NeXT values go from -12 to 12, USB goes from -127 to 127.

My Mac keyboard is slow

The original Mac keyboard controllers only support 2-key rollover.

Do these run TMK/QMK? What firmware is it?

The firmware is custom, it's not based on anything else. The chip used in the *2USB adapters is not an AVR, so it won't run the usual suspects. It's not as powerful but it makes up for that by being much smaller and having a lot of useful things built-in, so the whole device can be much smaller.

The firmware is actively developed so I'll do my best to incorporate more features.

Why a micro-USB socket? I have too many dongles! Why not USB-A/USB-C/etc?

I can't make something that will work for everyone, so the micro-B socket is the best compromise between size, cost, and ubiquity. Using a full size USB-A plug would be nice, but it would only fit well on certain computers. On others it would block ports or not fit at all. Using a socket lets you pick what cable you use so you can find the right size/color/shape combination. The micro-B connector keeps the device small, they're low-cost, and cables are cheap and available everywhere.

What kind of warranty do you provide?

Drakware products have a 30 day limited warranty. Please check the Fine Print page for full warranty info.

More questions? Email support ​a​t​ drakware.com