Date   : Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:49:52 -0500
From   : jules.richardson99@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: master keyboard

Rob wrote:
> Sorry, no.
> 
> It's a matrix which is scanned by the system VIA and decoded by the
> OS.   There is no decoding to ASCII or otherwise done on the board.

Yeah, I guess they changed as it was cheaper to do it that way; the earlier 
System keyboard was ASCII. I had a heck of a job tracking one of those down 
(or indeed any parallel ASCII keyboard as a substitute) when I needed one.

> I used to have (might still have) an old viewdata terminal keyboard
> that was RS232 ASCII based, but that's going back well over 20
> years... 

That could work if fed through the appropriate gubbins. Although when looking 
for parallel keyboards as above I considered doing this, but even finding a 
serial ASCII setup was proving hard (I found a couple of such 1970s terminal 
keyboards, but they were built like tanks and would have required a complete 
rebuild to get rid of oxidisation problems)

I believe the RML 380Z keyboards were parallel ASCII - but they're rare as 
hens teeth these days (380Z systems seem to be found keyboardless 90% of the 
time). 'Sacrificing' one probably wouldn't be good classic computer karma.

My feeling would be that if you're building a Z80 system from scratch then you 
probably know enough about what you're doing to rustle up something that can 
take the stock BBC keyboard and spit ASCII out at the far side via a little 
PIC micro or similar (or just use the VIA approach and do the scanning in 
software as with the BBC) :-)

cheers

Jules