pixelmischief Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 Fellow Atari Fans, As many of you know, Jens Schoenfeld, of Individual Computers and Commodore community fame, makes a product called "Keyrah" It is a board that turns the keyboard of a COmmodore 64 or Amiga computer into a USB keyboard for a PC, mapping the joystick ports to the arrow keys and number block. I engaged him today for information (email thread copied below) in the hopes I could make one of my own for the 1200XL. He responded, instead, inquiring about what interest there might be in our community for him to make a version for the Atari. To that end, please comment about your interest (or lack there of) in such a device. Pixel Mischief ----- Dan, a hundred units is not much - I'd be looking for a single order of 300 or more to justify a produciton run. Maybe we could drum up some more interest by letting the community take part in designing some details? Is there a standard connector for the keyboard? What about schematics of the matrix, are they available? What about other Atari models, do they all share the same keyboard matrix, or are they all different? For using an 80's keyboard on a PC, you need to put quite some thinking into the keyboard layout. Remember that many keyboards back then had less than 70 keys, but today's keyboards often have 105 and more keys. If you want to keep everything usable, you have to think about every little detail. Keyrah is doing that quite clever, and we also have the switch that selects one of two keyboard layouts (one geared for emulation and another for Windows use). You'd have to specify exactly which key shall be which one. Next would be joysticks - the Atari uses the same kind of joysticks, and Keyrah is mapping them to cursor keys and the numeric block, which I could also change to different keys. LED connections are the same on most Commodore machines, but I don't know about Ataris. We have caps lock, num lock and scroll lock that can be displayed "somehow". If the Ataris have a special connector, I could add that. ciao, -- Jens Schönfeld At 16:00 24.01.2011 -0500, you wrote: >Jens, > >There is definitely a market for an "Atari Keyrah". The Atari enthusiast scene is as big and active as the Commodore scene. Modders like Ben Heck have been butchering PC keyboards and replacing keycaps to get the effect in their Atari laptop and desktop PC projects. Additionally, anyone who has ever used an Atari 1200XL will tell you it is the best keyboard ever made. I would buy 4 right away and have heard enough whining in the forums over the lack of such a product (even people referring to yours) to feel confident a production run of 100 units would sell. > >Dan > >-----Original Message----- > >Hi, > >Keyrah is a USB device, you need to get a microcontroller, preferrably with a base code for human interface device, then write code for scanning the keyboard and translate that data to USB codes. If you see a market for an "Atari Keyrah", I could make a special version with your keyboard layout that you can sell. Let me know how many you think you could sell to the Atari community (I'm totally in the Commodore world, sorry). > >ciao, >-- >Jens Schönfeld > > >At 12:56 24.01.2011 -0500, you wrote: > >> >>Jens, >> >>I would like to make a Keyrah-like device for my 8-bit Atari, and need some guidance. Can you help? >> >>Are you using an FPGA? If so, which. If not, what are you using? >>As a high-level design, I guess such a device polls the source pins, converts the data into a value in the source keyboard matrix, converts it to the equivalent value on the destination keyboard matrix, and writes it out to the destination pins. Is this how it works? If not, where am I mixed up? >> >>Thanks, >>Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimo Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 well I am interested, but it would be for an 800xl version, no way am I killing my 1200xl the matrix is different on each model I believe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Wouldn't it be easier to make a cart with a mini-USB connector on it - the Atari runs the software to identify itself as a HID, with some re-programming possible, and the PC/Mac/whatever on the other end just thinks it's talking to any other keyboard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 There was an entire thread on this a year or so ago. The matrix should be the same on all Atari keyboards as the internal Pokey keycodes all relate to row/columns. That said though, the physical connector not necessarily the same. But really, the 800 and the XL keyboards (some of) would be the only ones you'd want to use on a PC anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Wouldn't it be easier to make a cart with a mini-USB connector on it - the Atari runs the software to identify itself as a HID, with some re-programming possible, and the PC/Mac/whatever on the other end just thinks it's talking to any other keyboard. Yeah, that's a better solution. I actually use a reverse solution-- using a PC keyboard with my A8s by running a VBI driver that takes keystrokes coming from PC's parallel port through one of the joystick ports. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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