Re: PC Keyboard hack feasible?
                                       
   From: Paul Albers <pa@gis.shl.com>
   Reply to: Paul Albers
   Date: Tue, 06 Oct 1998 09:31:51 -0400
   Organization: UUNET Canada News Transport
   References:
          <6vbv9e$eem$1@attila.apana.org.au>
Marc Walters wrote:
>
> After all the discussion that went into the recent thread concerning using
> a PC keybpard with the C64, I thought that maybe there's a simpler answer
> than building a hardware blackbox to interpret the device's serial output
> from the i8049.
>
> Bypass it completely. There are some cheap keyboards that use
> transparent plastic sheets with metallic ink stamped onto them for the
> contacts and tracks. By scratching out most of the tracks with a sharp
> blade and redrawing them with one of those pens filled with conductive ink
> to match the 8*8 keyboard matrix. Cut the tracks on the small circuit
> board and join the ends of a ribbon cable to the 16 used connectors. The
> other end of the ribbon cable (or can you get shielded cable with 16+
> wires cheaply?) goes to the connector inside the C64.
>
> Okay, one of those cheap asian imports (aren't they all?) will be
> required, and it will be rendered useless for use with a PC, but at least
> there won't be a big black box taking up the user port. There doesn't seem
> to be a way to easily implement a caps shiftlock either, but who uses that
> key anyway.  :)

I've considered this myself and although you could get a 1-1 key
translation
doing this (in theory), the real reason I want to be able to hook up a
PC keyboard is to have the 4 cursor keys, numberpad, and general layout
of a PC keyboard (<shift>2 giving a @ instead of a ") and this will
not accomplish that way.

Paul
-------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Albers (pa@gis.shl.com)
     "First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
                                -- Dr. Who