13 Feb
2002
13 Feb
'02
5:10 p.m.
As you will note, Barry authorized this posting.
- don
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 17:24:45 -0500
From: Barry A. Watzman <Watzman(a)neo.rr.com>
To: 'Don Maslin' <donm(a)cts.com>
Subject: RE: SOL-20 keyboard
I won't but you may if you want to.
Barry
-----Original Message-----
From: Don Maslin [mailto:donm@cts.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 1:05 AM
To: Barry A. Watzman
Subject: Re: SOL-20 keyboard
On Tue, 12 Feb 2002, Barry A. Watzman wrote:
By the way, in 1977 I made and sold a SOL-20 keyboard
modification kit
that included a new ROM for the keyboard and new keytops. The new ROM
made the high order bit of the numeric keypad keys a "1" instead of a
"0". This made it possible to distinguish between the keys in the
numeric keypad and the numeric keys in the top row of the normal
keyboard (in the stock keyboard, these different keys produced exactly
the same output). This was transparent to normal applications because
they normally did an "ANI 7FH" anyway, stripping this bit, but it
could be used by an application if the application wanted to do so.
The new keytops had word processing legends instead of
numbers, and
really was made for the "Electric Pencil" and "Wordstar" word
processors. The keytops were actually made by Keytronic (I had to pay
tooling charges, about $1,000 (those were 1977 dollars, it was about
one-fourth the price of a new car)) and and matched the SOL keyboard
exactly.
I have a few of these kits left in a box in the basement. If anyone
wants them, they are $25. What I'm not sure of is if I have the
installation instructions anywhere.
[If anyone takes me up on this, I'm actually going to have to FIND that
box, which may be easier said than done.]