Mysteries of the Griffin iMate and the Apple Extended Keyboard II

> ”My local $2 shop didn't have a CR1225 cell, but they did have a CR1220 cell which is the same thickness and voltage.” A CR1220 cell is by definition not the same thickness as a 1225. CR = Lithium cell, round 12 = 12mm diameter 25 = 2.5mm height/thickness With only 0.5mm difference, a 1220 and 1225 will be interchangeable in many applications. But not always!

I worked at Griffin for a short period of time while we were still selling this. I was in tech support, and I didn't even know about the battery.

As someone has pointed out in the post's comments, there's the Wombat ADB-USB converter as an alternative. Doesn't look as good, but requires no battery or other power supply. IIRC, it does distinguish between left and right Shift/Command/Option keys. Quickly looking at the product page I realize that it even converts both ways, so you can also use it to attach your USB keyboard to your ADB Mac or NeXT.

The power button in the keyboard was a very elegant UI solution from Apple that required non-trivial electrical engineering solutions, and as we can see it even required some changes to the USB circuits. It is a testament to Apple commitment to their specialness that they do similar stuff to this day (TouchID keyboards).