Hi,
I'm Gabriele "asbesto" Zaverio from Palazzolo Acreide, Italy! We at our Computer Museum started this project for building a replica of the famous Apple 1. I'm in contact with Mike Willegal and here I am greetings everyone here for the great amount of data in this forum!
We are in the process of searching all components; our restoration lab have a lot of vintage TTL and other parts so very few of them are missing.
About the keyboard, I have found this article here:
http://www.tinaja.com/glib/impascii1.pdf
Maybe can be useful to hack any kind of ASCII keyboard into one that fit the Apple 1?
Greetings from the sunny Sicilia
It's really not worth trying to adapt a non-standard keyboard to work with a Mimeo or Apple-1.
It's easy enough to get a hold of an Apple II or II plus keyboard and use a simple board or cable to wire it to match the Apple-1 format. Wendell Sander has a whole thing on this on his website...
Here is a link to the PDF.
http://www.apple1notes.com/old_apple/Notes_files/Using%20Apple%20II%20Keyboard%20for%20Apple%201.pdf
Also if you want it for a museum setup and want to leave it on and let people use the system, then use a PS/2 keyboard and one of Mike Willegal's PS/2 serial keyboard adapter. This way you won't risk a vintage keyboard on the public. If you want to do an automated demonstration setup the adapter is also good because you can drive it from a PC and interact with it on the PS/2 keyboard.
Cheers,
Corey
Why not? We want to restore our spare Apple ][ instead of use their keyboards as spare parts, so this can be a better solution for us
I found some other informations about keyboards for Apple 1 here:
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/Apple/Apple_1.htm
and here come other interesting info about the old TV Typewriter by Don Lancaster:
http://www.tinaja.com/glib/bdtvtype.pdf
Obviously we also considered the PS/2 interface, it will be very useful for the museum installation
What about using a II plus keyboard? I agree using a raised power key Apple II keyboard would be a waste. The II plus keyboards are common enough and not really something that would have museum significance.
Cheers,
Corey
Or even better....
Contact Mike Willegal and ask him about his Datanetics keyboard. Then you would be pretty authentic to what most Apple-1 users had at the time. I think he's keeping a list of how many people want one and if enough do, he will have another run. Then if you still want to do the PS/2 adapter at the same time, I have a keyboard multiplexor circuit that I can send you though Mike that lets a Datanetics keyboard and Mike's PS/2 adapter work at the same time.
Cheers,
Corey
Yes, we already contacted Mike about his Datanetics keyboard... now we have a lot of hints. Thank you and sorry if all this discussion seem kinda stupid we just want to hack
No problem, but if you like to hack and you want it to look authentic, then the Datanetics kit is the way to go....