4 Dec
2008
4 Dec
'08
11:14 a.m.
On Thursday 04 December 2008 11:03:11 am ROBO5.8 wrote:
Hi Folks,
It's been interesting taking out my old CP/M stuff and getting it
operational again.
My system uses an 8bit TTL Keytronics Capacitive Sense keyboard. It was
operational for about an hour and then it quit.
It turns out that the keyboard uses little sponge pads to hold the
capacitive disks and they have biodegraded into dust.
So I went looking for an old 8b TTL replacement keyboard. So far no luck.
I also looked for a black box solution that would take an AT or PS/2
keyboard and convert it to a parallel port output. So far no luck.
Steve Ciarcia had an article in Byte way back when with some project in it
that used a typical peecee keyboard as an input device but that converted
that to some sort of parallel signals, it wasn't very complicated. Sorry I
can't remember what specific project that was offhand...
I've had idle thoughts from time to time about building one of those and
sticking an EPROM between the outputs of that circuit and the device to be
driven, to convert the scan codes that you get to ASCII or whatever. Maybe
one of these days I'll get that particular round tuit. :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin