Any interest in a USB keyboard adapter for ][/][+?

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Any interest in a USB keyboard adapter for ][/][+?

Any interest in a USB keyboard adapter for ][/][+?

 

I know the PS/2 adapters are common, but PS/2 keyboards are getting less and less common these days.  Also almost all of the wireless keyboards available today are USB.

 

I've got some USB Host Modules and I'm going to try to build a prototype using an Arduino.  If I can get that working then a PCB could be designed using chips and parts directly instead of the modules.

 

Also if this works, it is probably possible to design something similar for a //e.

 

 

 

 

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I'm interested

I was just starting to plan the same thing myself, but I don't really have time right now.  I would probably be interested in one or two if you get it working at a reasonable price.

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I'm not planning on making

I'm not planning on making any for sale.  I've never had any luck with getting any kind of support for tthings like that.  I will give away the info on how to DIY.

 

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In post #1, softwarejanitor

In post #1, softwarejanitor wrote:

 

"I know the PS/2 adapters are common, but PS/2 keyboards are getting less and less common these days. "

"Also almost all of the wireless keyboards available today are USB."

 

Uncle Bernies comment:

 

So true !  I had a hard time finding new-old-stock PS/2 keyboards - I don't want the worn out and beaten up ones which often also are disgusting / filthy.

 

So I settled for USB keyboards and I use them with one of these little green USB/PS2 converters, which are abundant. (at least for me, I have lots of them, when USB was introduced, they came with every USB peripheral, mice, keyboards, most people threw then away, but I collected them whenever I could get near one, I even fished them out of the trash cans after the IT group had installed new computers).

 

So unless somebody hates these little green converters, it's not pressing to have an USB/Apple-16pin keyboard converter. Which may be the reason why  there are none.

 

Another  obstacle (other than the lack of demand because of the green little converters) is the technical complexity of USB. Unlike PS/2 where you can bit-bang the I/O on even the simplest 8-bit microcontroller, USB requires a USB peripheral in the microcontroller, and then, quite a lot of software to implement the protocol. I know of some PIC microcontrollers who have such a peripheral, but these are nasty to program.

 

Not wanting to discourange you, but these are the issues which kept me from designing my own USB/Apple keyboard interface for 20 years (Know thy enemy).

 

Oh, and when speaking about enemies, never, ever, use a wireless keyboard. The Gestapo can intercept the transmission and then they know what you are typing, even when being offline. If you use one of the evil operating systems which were designed for herd control, this point is moot, however, as they all have built-in keyloggers anyways and whenever you go online, the keylogger will get in contact with the mothership and snitch everything you have typed to it, to be recorded and stored for eternity (or until they go bankrupt, good riddance !).

 

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The modules I speak of make

The modules I speak of make what you mention about the complexities of  USB not so much of an issue.  There are libraries for these USB Host controllers that provide fairly simple C APIs for handling keyboard or mouse input.  The Chinese CH559 uses an 8051 style microcontroller core and it could almost be all programmed on it, except that I don't think it has enough usable GPIO for this application.  I'm looking at a module using that chip that makes it even easier as it is set up to interface to something like an Arduino (Atmel processor) which can interface by GPIO pins directly to the Apple ][/][+ keyboard connector.  Programming the Atmel should become basically use API to read keyboard data from the USB keyboard, then set the GPIO pins appropriately and strobe in the keypress.  Or keypresses if I wanted to get fancy and say make the F-keys generate DOS or BASIC commands or something.  Maybe use the Alt key to generate BASIC commands like the way some of the old Tiawan/Hong Kong clone keyboards had them.

 

As for wireless...  I'm not exactly going to be doing anything on an Apple ][+ that the gestapo would care about.  And even if I was, those old machines leak so much RFI they can spy on them anyway -- if they still have the technical info on systems so old.  Back in the 1980s I built a Van Eck device based on the Computer Security Magazine article that the NSA tried to suppress, so I'm pretty familiar with that sort of thing.

 

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In post #5, softwarejanitor

In post #5, softwarejanitor wrote:

 

"The Chinese CH559 uses an 8051 style microcontroller core and it could almost be all programmed on it, except that I don't think it has enough usable GPIO for this application."

 

Uncle Bernie has a cheap trick to expand GPIO:

 

... just add a 74164 style shift register (modern cmos version if you have them).  Two GPIO pins, for data and clock , and the 74164 makes 8 output bits out of it.

 

Oh, and about the wireless keyboards: my warning was not meant for use with Apple II and such. It was meant in the general case, using wireless keyboards with the computers where you keep your bank account data, your bitcoins, or other senseitive information. And, of course, with "Gestapo" I do not mean the criminal organisation that ceased to exist in the year 1945, but hackers in general, or any criminal organisation, regardless of which country,  which spies on the citizens. "Criminal" because they ignore the constitutional rights to do that. It's a matter of principles. They are just disgusting filth. So don't enable them by using such unsafe wireless devices. And tell the manufacturers of these devices why you don't use them. So they stop that nonsense or provide hard encryption noone can crack. Open sourced and verifyable to have no backdoors. Only then we should accept wireless devices.

 

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