Amiga 500 keyboards, need to clear some things up!

[ElectroBlaster]

Ok I have some plans that are just in my head at the moment. I need to know 100% for sure the A500 keyboard has a proper controller on it! I am sure it is a controller as somebody has said its not, seems to be causing confusion.

I need to then find some kind of pinout or schematic for it. If I can clarify what it is and how it is wired, pinouts etc then I will attempt to work something out using one of those usb development boards. This might just all blow up in my face (usually does lol) but I plan to make something that will allow an a500 keyboard to work on a pc. Yes a keyrah works but im starting to think that once a1200 keyboard or the ribbon/membraines start drying up then there will be problems. I just do not like the keyrah and how it connects to the a1200 keyboard. I think my ribbon has gone dead because even tho I was carefull I still fubard it

[roy bates]

the a500 keyboard has got a controller on it,but unfortunatley i cant remember the pinout.


do you mean the five wires that come from the keyboard or the controller itself?

[Toni Wilen]

It has a microcontroller with internal ROM and RAM but it isn't really important

More important is protocol, which is simple serial two wire (data + clock), documented in HRM.

[roy bates]

heres the pinout for a 6570-036

http://www.amiga-stuff.com/hardware/6500_1.html

and...heres the pinout for the five wirs that come from the controller board

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct...D0ERxrLtJW0a-w

the rest of the logic ic's look like basic 74 series chips and a 555 timer on the board itself.

hope this helps.

[ElectroBlaster]

Spot on

Thanx for this guys!

[ElectroBlaster]

Ok this has all started because somebody over at the Atari-Forum used something called Teensy which is a usb development board.

Joska is the guys name. He says I would need to do this:

I guess you will have to start from scratch. The Amiga 500 keyboard has something that looks like a PS/2 protocol electrically. I don't know anything about the protocol itself. You will have to implement a host for the keyboard, decode the data stream and convert it to USB HID scancodes. It would most likely be a fun little project

So being completely green on this stuff, is there an easy way or will this be hard? I can probably do it if I can grab enougth information.
Oh and I will need to buy some Teensy's

EDIT: Forgot to say this guy made the board work with an ST keyboard so people could start making mini-itx conversions out of dead st's. I think if an ST can be done then why not the Amiga keyboard. I think the keyrah is brilliant but its really only geared towards fitting into a C64. If it was not so dam hard to fit into a non-standard case then I would not be even bothering with this!

[Jope]

Well, since you had to ask, it will be hard.

Don't let that put you off though. The Amiga keyboard protocol is not very complex and the difficult part of sending the keycodes via USB is probably already handled for you with whatever HID code is available for the Teensy.

[Photon]

@Electroblaster: not to discourage you, but 'drying up' isn't what is causing a ribbon to malfunction. It's two plastic ribbons glued together, with very thin conductive strips on one of them.

If the ribbon looks okay and has not been worn down, all you have to do is insert it a few times until it works (sideways alignment to the socket pins is finicky.)

If it's worn, you peel off the upper one to reveal more of the strips by about 5mm, and cut that with scissors. Then you cut off the worn end 5mm with scissors. And insert.

KeyRah is actually excellent, I mounted mine inside A600 cases. I agree the attachment of the ribbon is finicky, the usual spot of trouble is that the wingnuts hit an edge and that it's easy to bend the board.

A500 keyboards are indeed lovely. So don't let me stop you from making a nice adapter for them

[ElectroBlaster]

I have made alot of progress thanks to some really talented people who use Raspberry Pi boards! One chap has taken a dead a500 and put in a pi board and got the keyboard working.

They took an Arduino Leonardo development board and hooked up an a500 keyboard, they even got the leds to work

Then somebody else came along and figured out how to get 9pin joysticks working. I am pretty darn amazed at all this stuff so I have started to pull things together.

So far I ordered:

Arduino Leonardo
Arduino development prototyping sheild (I will fit header pins for the a500 keyboard lead)
Development patch leads
Header pins/strips or whatever they are called.

I have the software ready and waiting. I have printed the relevant a500/a2000 tech docs out for the keyboard scan codes etc. Most of it is already done. All I have to do is learn and suss it for myself.

This is the first time I have actually done anything like this properly but I am determined to do it!

@Photon When talking of "drying up" I ment to word it as time passes there will be less and less of these a1200 ribbons in good shape. But I did not know you could peel parts off like that and expose the tracks without killing it entirely so I will give that a shot! But when I have sorted this Arduino and a500 keyboard the keyrah will be defunct for me. I have another issue with it and I do not believe its ribbon related, the switch is ment to change the keymaps and all it does is die stone dead? I just cannot understand what is going wrong with it?

[ElectroBlaster]

Oh and I really should have done this earlier, for anyone that is interested look here:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/vi...67b4be76300baf

[ElectroBlaster]

I have finally got it working! Thanx to the help of a few people over at the raspberry pi forum. I stumbled along, found my wiring was wrong on two lines and certain files were in the wrong place but it works!

I now have an Amiga 500 keyboard hooked up via USB.
It works great apart from the speed which is noticeable, I can easily bog it down when typing fast. So unless there is a way to tweak that then I am stuck between the Keyrah or this Arduino solution.

The arduino allows two joysticks to be attached aswell which I do plan to try out.

[roy bates]

thats good news!

Hi,
I'm the guy who added the joystick feature. I also made some improvements in the code, so the speed problem is history now. :-)

here's the latest version:
AMIGA 500/1000/2000 Keyboard Interface:
http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,139358.0.html

[Jope]

Very nice. Makes me want to try it.. :-)

Hi!

I just found the project and are thinking about doing it myself. Are you using the code from the raspberry forum? If not, would you like to share yours?

Thanks!

-Fredrik

[\\.\]

WTF? In 2013 I asked the Arduino lot for info about HID and I spent a considerable amount on an Arduino kit and got 'Jack Sh--' help with it.

For what its worth, I have learnt more in a week on EAB than 2 years on the Arduino boards...