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Re: I Built a Keyboard

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On Sun, 19 Oct 2014, whiskers@sleepy.cat wrote:

>>  I Built a Keyboard
>
> Nice keyboard mate!  These could be a nice DIY soldering kit, though
> perhaps not an inexpensive one.
>
If you open up a current keyboard, many or most have a tiny board with an 
epoxy blob over an actual chip, which then somehow mates with the mylar 
circuit board that connects the keys up. Kind of useful for those 
computers that need a keyboard in order to boot up (just grab one of thsoe 
tiny boards, and plug it in, the circuit board can be mounted on the back 
of the computer) but you don't want or need a keyboard for that computer.

But if they expected solid contact (and I'm not sure that's the case), you 
could extract that tiny keyboard and thus have the electronics.  Then all 
you need to do is dig through the junk pile till you find a decent 
keyboard that isn't "PC compatible" and wire it up in the proper matrix, 
then connect that to the tiny board.  There used to be plenty of surplus 
keyboards around, I once wired one up to use with my Radio Shack Color 
Computer (that didn't really have a good computer) but back then, just 
needed to wire the keys in the proper matrix, then use ribbon cable to 
plug it into the computer.

The IBM PC computers used to be more modifiable.  I have one clone from 
the eighties that came with an Apple II clone.  SOmeone had changed the 
rom in the keyboard so it would output ASCII for the Apple II, rather than 
the up/down codes that the PC expects.  But it even came with the original 
rom, so it could be used with an IBM PC, though I think it's old enough 
that's only good for the original.  The keyboard format changed a tad 
later, different keycodes if nothing else, so unless you have a keyboard 
that switches between PC and AT, those did exist in the transistion 
period, though on some keyboards the switch ws internal, you can't use it 
on the AT and later.  But it's all become so standardized that that blob 
of epoxy will not be connected to an external ROM, and so those tiny 
boards can't be modified.

   Michael

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I Built a Keyboard Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-10-19 13:50 +0000
  Re: I Built a Keyboard whiskers@sleepy.cat - 2014-10-19 15:28 +0000
    Re: I Built a Keyboard Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2014-10-19 14:38 -0400
  Re: I Built a Keyboard RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-10-20 18:53 +0000
    Re: I Built a Keyboard Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2014-10-20 16:09 -0400
      Re: I Built a Keyboard "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-10-21 00:42 +0100
        Re: I Built a Keyboard Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2014-10-20 22:13 -0400
          Re: I Built a Keyboard "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-10-21 10:43 +0100
        Re: I Built a Keyboard scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2014-10-21 17:07 +0000
          Re: I Built a Keyboard RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-10-21 17:42 +0000
          Re: I Built a Keyboard Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-10-21 23:20 +0000
        Re: I Built a Keyboard Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2014-10-22 14:23 +0100
          Re: I Built a Keyboard "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-10-23 14:22 +0100
            Re: I Built a Keyboard Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2014-10-23 14:03 -0400
            Re: I Built a Keyboard Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-10-23 22:03 +0200
              Re: I Built a Keyboard Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2014-10-24 15:44 -0400

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