High profile keyboard

Michau · September 28, 2010, 09:14 PM

I have recently acquired a 720 which does not work. This does not trouble me much, as I am going to open it up soon and examine with an oscilloscope, and perhaps I will be able to get it back alive like I did with the 610.

But it does not have a keyboard, and I have no idea where I could get one (besides cannibalizing my 610 and changing the plug). Do you perhaps know a source where such keyboard could be obtained?

Steve Gray · September 29, 2010, 02:37 AM

Germany.... ebay.de sometimes has CBM-II stuff, but I haven't seen too many loose 720 keyboards. Main problem with ebay.de is a lot of sellers won't ship to north america and some only sell to europe... perhaps not a problem for you, depending on your location.

Steve

carlsson · September 30, 2010, 09:34 PM

I agree, it looks like the most number of CBM-II items are found in Germany. Personally I'm out of items.

Another option would be trying to use something like Jim Brain's keyboard adapter C=Key but it requires to be reprogrammed to match the CBM-II keyboard layout. If someone can open up a keyboard and follow the wiring, it might be possible to at least recreate the matrix for manual simulation of the signals.

The sad part is that I began to rescue Commodore stuff in December 2005. A few months earlier, the former reseller had begun to clear out garbage. He started with old matrix printers and external keyboards, both 8032-SK and CBM-II style. I managed to find a few, but according to him a number of those keyboards ended up at the dump in the fall of 2005.

Michau · October 01, 2010, 05:58 AM

I'm in Poland, which is right across the border from Germany. So no shipping problems

I have put several alerts on Ebay.de few months ago. This way I am emailed every time a CBM-II related item is posted. There is actually not that much of them. In the past 6 months, there were only 5 auctions:

* Two 610s, which I was not interested in since I already have one.
* A 710, which was well over my financial limit.
* A dead 720, which I bought.
* A 8250LP, which I bought.
Plus one overpriced B128 on Ebay.com

Interestingly, 3 of these 5 items were actually from Austria, not from Germany. Maybe that's where most of the treasure is hidden

It's a real pity about these keyboards being thrown away. I guess many other valuable hardware was lost this way. I bought my 610 from a school boy, who got it from the teacher who was clearing stuff from the IT classroom. Otherwise it would also be thrown out, I suppose.

On the bright side, I fiddled with the 720 and managed to get it working (without the keyboard, of course). Then I broke a pin in the character ROM so now the display is all green (all character bitmaps are $FF)

But should be easy to fix. If only I had this keyboard...

Steve Gray · October 01, 2010, 07:29 AM

Quote from: carlsson on September 30, 2010, 09:34 PM
I agree, it looks like the most number of CBM-II items are found in Germany. Personally I'm out of items.

Another option would be trying to use something like Jim Brain's keyboard adapter C=Key but it requires to be reprogrammed to match the CBM-II keyboard layout. If someone can open up a keyboard and follow the wiring, it might be possible to at least recreate the matrix for manual simulation of the signals.

The keyboard matrix has been documented and is on zimmers. According to Jim's page, it's fairly easy to add support for additional keyboards to the C=Key.

Steve

Michau · October 01, 2010, 07:32 AM

Yes, I saw the matrix

But I never heard of C=Key, where can I find information about it?

Steve Gray · October 01, 2010, 11:43 PM

Here is Jim's C=Key page: http://www.jbrain.com/projects/ckey/
Here are pictures and schematics: http://www.jbrain.com/vicug/gallery/c=key

Steve

Michau · October 01, 2010, 11:59 PM

Looks interesting, and I think it would do the job.

But... maybe I am blind, but I can't see any download link, where I could download the controller firmware source code?

Michau · December 03, 2010, 10:27 PM

Yikes, I found it!

http://cgi.ebay.de/COMMODORE-CBM-TASTATUR-700-SERIE-Raritat-/170570864520?pt=Klassische_Computer&hash=item27b6d0d788

Now please nobody outbid me!

airship · December 04, 2010, 06:48 AM

Good news! I can't imagine there are many out there who need such a thing, so hopefully you won't have any competition. Good luck!

Michau · December 07, 2010, 08:01 PM

And the keyboard is mine

The seller seems to have lots of keyboards available, perhaps from some liquidation?

RobertB · December 08, 2010, 02:55 AM

Quote from: Michau on December 07, 2010, 08:01 PM
The seller seems to have lots of keyboards available...

If I ever get a CBM 600 or 700 series computer, that would be good to remember.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug

Blacklord · December 08, 2010, 05:31 AM

Unfortunately I don't speak German - does this guy post internationally ?

Michau · December 08, 2010, 06:32 PM

Yes, he agreed to ship to me to Poland. He speaks very good English, BTW

He also has lots of bare 700 motherboards, unfortunately all socketed chips are stripped.

carlsson · December 08, 2010, 06:59 PM

Oh yes, that is ibay_1000. I believe he or a friend of him inherited a basement full of Commodore stuff a few years ago. He has been selling a lot of boxed SFD-1001's, CBM-II parts, VIC-20 memory expansions and pretty much anything you could imagine, apart from the ultra-rare prototype items of course. It seems his supply was even better than mine was.

Michau · December 08, 2010, 08:38 PM

Quote from: Blacklord on December 08, 2010, 05:31 AM
Unfortunately I don't speak German - does this guy post internationally ?

I asked him and he confirmed to ship internationally, including US and Canada.