It also has what looks like a speaker grill on the bottom. Here is an old ebay listing that went for $125: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/New-IBM-6247440-Ke … r-/121184199564

Typical asking prices is around $130 I've noticed. Is it an industrial keyboard?

Those keyboards were made for the IBM RT systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_6150_RT

They are proprietary, and the one you have there is a rubber dome and not the more sought after capacitive variant. The E57888-6298389 is a bit better than E57888-6247440 since it won't suffer from rollover issues and can be converted to USB easily.
https://deskthority.net/keyboards-f2/soarer-s … 7888-t9688.html

Unless you have an IBM RT system along with the cable (else a kludge is needed), your only option is to mod it for USB. Pointless if you don't like how the keyboard feels.

It is not an industrial keyboard and the prices are artificial, only the 6298389 RT board would be of interest to anyone since it's similar to a topre mechanism instead of a basic non-capacitive rubber membrane. This is what an IBM industrial keyboard looks like:
http://i.imgur.com/BNRrXMz.jpg

They will always have a grounded spacebar, and later units (particularly the space saving keyboard variants) will have drainage holes.

I'm guessing the people who doled out $130 beans for those needed them for actual RT systems.

raymangold,

Thanks! That is way more info than I was able to divine from Google. It's a shame, it looks like you could just use a double-ended male PS/2 cable to hook it up to a computer's PS/2 port. I'm guessing that switch is to switch between operating systems?

clueless1 wrote:

raymangold,

Thanks! That is way more info than I was able to divine from Google. It's a shame, it looks like you could just use a double-ended male PS/2 cable to hook it up to a computer's PS/2 port. I'm guessing that switch is to switch between operating systems?

It goes from mini-DIN to this weird square connector that some older IBM equipment uses:

Source: https://deskthority.net/photos-f62/ibm-rt-e57888-t4101.html

So the most you could accomplish with a PS/2 cable is nothing, the worst would be frying your PS/2 port if the 5v and ground are inverted. The fact that IBM happened to use mini-DIN on one side of the cable is entirely coincidental to the fact that the Personal System/2 also used mini-DIN for its keyboard and mouse ports.

If you like how the keyboard feels, it would be a good modding project. If you don't, I'd probably just sell it.