Atari 400 Full-stroke Keyboard - Gauging Interest

[johndczerwinski]

After mowing many lawns in the 80s, I bought my first computer: the Atari 400.  I immediately upgraded the memory and found a company that made a quality full-stroke keyboard, the B-Key.  

 

Fast forward 30+ years, I have another 400 but cannot find any new quality after-market keyboards.  The ones on E-bay are few and far between, missing keys, too expensive.  

 

So I'm gauging Atari owners if there's an interest in full-stroke keyboards for the 400.  If there's enough interest to cover design, prototyping, and manufacturing, I would like to produce a run.

 

Please respond to me your interest and how many.

 

Thanks,

John C

[Chilly Willy]

As you can see from my avatar, I too have a B-Key. Awesome upgrade for any 400 owner. It will be interesting to see how many people still use their A400. Mine is pretty old and well-used, so I mostly keep it in its box and rely on my 65XE for most of my day-today Atari-ing these days.

 

[jacobus]

I'd be interested if it was sufficiently low profile to preserve the 400's looks.  I find the B-Key to be an ugly monstrosity they way it sticks up.  Perhaps a laptop style keyboard would be possible.  I'd be even more interested it if it matched the colouring scheme of the 400's membrane keyboard.

[Chilly Willy]

That would be pretty cool. The B-Key is a bit ugly... by modern standards. At the time, it wasn't that bad.

[FifthPlayer]

You might get better response if you repost in the main Atari 8-bit forum, or ask one of the mods to move this thread for you.  This is the programming sub-forum and so fewer people are likely to see it.

[+Larry]

Boy, this is a tough one.  Comparatively speaking, the 400 is such a niche machine. It has loyal, but few users compared to XL and XE machines.  Just curious -- have you done any research as to the costs involved in setting this up? Not trying to be a wet blanket, but just thinking of the costs.

-Larry

[ricortes]

IMHO: Cost prohibitive. If you go for something like the 1979 technology that gave the feel we all loved, individual keys sell for a small fortune. Actual mechanical gold plated contacts made up of a number of sub assemblies. You can compromise on parts and feel which would defeat what you are shooting for. Anyway, run a parts list for what you have in mind and see what numbers you come up with. It certainly could be I am wrong or ignorant of what is available or over reaching on what you have in mind.

 

I kind of do my own weird stuff outside of Atari. Just me but at this stage if I needed a keyboard for something I would probably just compromise and reuse some parts from other designs like 

 and make sure it worked with current USB keyboards.