[Maarten] told us about a C64 USB keyboard that was modified to be used as a standard input device. An interesting aspect of the project is the use of V-USB (formerly known as AVR-USB). V-USB is a software only approach to slow speed USB HID. In essence this is a two fold mod, The C64 keyboard is patched to a PC, and an off the shelf AVR is software-hacked to bit bang the USB communications. The author notes an initial problem with multiple key presses that was later corrected in the application. For the other side of the spectrum, we had covered the C64 twittering client, and a commodore 64 laptop.
I would have use an usb keyboard circuitry instead but that wouldn’t be such an hardaware-hacker keyboard.
Must try this with my MSX or ZX one.
C64 laptop was produced back in the 80s.
SX-64. Natch.
SX64 is not exactly what you would call a laptop…
Or you could just buy the Keyrah 8-bit :) It does keyboard and more.
I have two of those, one in a breadbin. The other just in case the motherboard in one of my other C64s go dead.
Hm.. nice.. would be a funny use for my spare SX64 keyboard…
If you ever want to sell your spare let me know
This is from december 2007. Spiff has a few other cool things on his website though.
Same thing is “keyrah” by Individual Computers. It also can handle C16, plus/4, C128 and Amiga 500/600 as a USB keyboard … since 2005.
Infos here http://amiga.think42.com/news/news109_e.htm and here http://www.vesalia.de/e_keyrah.htm
I have no idea why my comment never reached the board, though i’ve posted it 6 times now.. .. but:
At
http://www.sociallife.org/data/projects/c64key/
i’m hosting some PCB-files (and Bill-of-materials, etc) that I made with Eagle (just SVG/PDF/PNG at the moment, sorry), that fit this project.
The files should be self-explanatory; so knock yourself out.
PCB credit me, the rest (schematic, code, etc) entirely credited to the amazing Spiff!
The keyrah is handy, but can also be made smaller to fit in the old Micronik keyboard case:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_ZmgfsgbGDLs/SkfWzuWP3bI/AAAAAAAAE6Y/GwOVjQuPl5o/s800/DSC05680.JPG
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_ZmgfsgbGDLs/SkfWslCZCcI/AAAAAAAAE6Q/rdOzcH8hvJ0/s800/DSC05681.JPG