November 30, 2025
Bleach, Bus, and Beef
Apple Desktop Bus Protocol (2021)
Vintage Mac keyboard gets a glow‑up; fans feud over bleach and “better buses”
TLDR: A developer revived a vintage Apple keyboard and documented the old ADB connection, plus a DIY USB adapter. Commenters praised ADB’s reliability while warning that plastic “retrobright” bleaching can backfire, sparking a funny, fierce feud between patina purists and glow‑up fans—showing how passion runs deep in retro tech.
A retro love story turned comment cage match: Szymon revived his childhood Apple Extended Keyboard II, whitening the yellowed plastic and wiring it up for modern computers with a DIY adapter—and dropped a clear guide to Apple Desktop Bus (ADB), the old one‑wire system that let keyboards and mice share a line. The crowd swooned, then split. One camp cheered ADB’s rock‑solid vibe—“it has a reset, so one bad bit doesn’t wreck your day,” shouted a fan, throwing shade at modern gear—while the other camp clutched pearls over the retrobright bleach, warning it makes plastic yellow faster. The debate turned into high drama: patina protectors say “let vintage age gracefully,” while glow‑up gurus want that fresh‑out‑’95 look. Memes flew: “nicotine chic,” “grandma keyboard glow‑up,” and “one bus to rule them all.” Meanwhile, keyboard cultists hyped the Extended Keyboard II as Apple’s answer to the IBM Model M, with the usual click‑clack supremacy chants. Szymon’s clean write‑up and GitHub project earned props, but the real show was the comments: reliability nerds dunking on newer standards, vintage purists waging war against bleach, and everyone agreeing that old tech still slaps—especially when you can plug it in today.
Key Points
- •The author built an ADB-to-USB adapter for the Apple Extended Keyboard II using an STM32 Blue Pill.
- •The article consolidates ADB protocol specifications primarily from Apple’s Guide to the Macintosh Family Hardware.
- •ADB is a single-bus, host-driven serial protocol suited to human input devices, with a nominal speed of 10 kb/s.
- •Devices typically do not transmit unsolicited data; they can briefly assert a request signal, and the bus idles at 5V with devices able to pull it low.
- •Each ADB device has an address that can be reassigned by the host and up to four 16-bit registers for device data and host writes.