I can't help you much on the Mega4 ST keyboard
issue, having left the
Atari universe before the Mega4 came out. However, it seems
reasonable to assume that the Mega4 follows the 520 and 1040 in the
keyboard design.
If this is so, there are several problems. The first is that the
serial signal levels are TTL, not RS232C, so a generic serial port
interface is out of the question. The second is that the bitrate is
a little odd (7812.5 bps) and not one you'll find on a PC serial
interface.
On the ST, the keyboard processor also handles the mouse and joystick
as well as the time-of-day clock. Keypresses are simple key-number
depress/key-number+128 release codes, but there are also a couple
dozen commands from the CPU that the keyboard understands, so we're
not talking about a simple terminal interface here.
It might be possible, if you're handy, to take a PC keyboard and a
microcontroller and concoct what you require for the Mega4 with
little more than a bunch of programming. But I'll leave that
exercise to you!
Hmmm... Sounds like cutting my floppy cable in two and trying to
interface it with a standard PC floppy drive might be the easier
approach. I was just trying to find a way that didn't involve
destroying my only floppy cable. I figure as soon as I do that I'll
find someone with a floppy drive and no cable and be sunk...