SOL-20 keyboard (fwd) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

6 Mar 2002

...
  As you will note, Barry authorized this posting.

As of this date, I've tried three or four times to contact
barry, with no response yet.

If any SOL jocks *have* been able to contact him, could 
you have him contact me?

TIA!

-dq

...
  ---------- Forwarded message ----------
 Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 17:24:45 -0500
 From: Barry A. Watzman &lt;Watzman(a)neo.rr.com&gt;
 To: 'Don Maslin' &lt;donm(a)cts.com&gt;
 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.] 