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Inspired by the mod in this thread... http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=570
I now wonder what is needed to use an A600 keyboard on an A1200 motherboard.
There seems to be no info in the thread. Only a very blurry image on page 4 that I can't see much more than some modification to the keyboard mpu has to be done...
Anyone with more info able to help me? ;)
I thought they were compatible. Just take one ribbon cable out and stick the cable for the A600 keyboard in. But don't do it until somebody else confirms it.
@drbrain
A1200 ZIF keyboard connector has 31 contacts.
A600 ZIF keyboard connector has 30 contacts.
So the A600 ribbon can be plugged in the A1200 connector from a mechanical point of view (the pitch is identical).
When you do so, make sure contacts 1 through 30 of the A600 ribbon align with contacts 2 through 31 on the A1200 connector. That is, contact 1 is left empty. <-- this is incorrect!
EDIT: It should align with contacts 1 through 30, leaving contact 31 empty.
The following chart refers to the A1200 (each row is assigned about 15 keys):
(HTML code for the table snipped, see jvdbossc's post below for an image of the table originally contained here)
That's the affected area. Obviously when you plug the A600 ribbon as described above, the rows will be messed up. I think however that Right Shift remains where it should be.
Now, by pressing the keys of a physical row on the A600 keyboard and observing which physical row's keys characters actually appear on screen, you can chart the correspondence between the A600 and A1200's keyboard rows. If a row appears as expected, the matching MPU pin is left intact, otherwise it's lifted and wire-soldered to the underlying pad which carries the correct row.
EDIT: I've left the HTML table, but after taking a look at the A600 schematics too (and discovering the error above!) and doing the pairings, here's the simplified version:
Disconnect keyboard MPU pins 15,16,17,19,20 from their respective pads.
Rewire them as follows:
Pad 17 to Pin 15
Pad 19 to Pin 16
Pad 20 to Pin 17
Pad 16 to Pin 19
Pad 15 to Pin 20
(i.e. it's a cyclical permutation).
Pin 21 is for row5 which isn't provided by the A600 keyboard, so it would be a good idea to disconnect it too from its pad and leave it unconnected.
---------- Post added at 04:36 ---------- Previous post was at 04:18 ----------
For the life of me I couldn't figure out how to display a properly tabbed chart, even with fixedsys. So just save the HTML code and view it in some browser.
Is there a proper way around this?
:) Thanks. So I guess no text-only way for neat-looking tables?
Thanks a lot for the info :bowdown:
Now I just have to try it in the real world ;)
A600 keyboard now working with A1200 :cool:
Not the best looking solution.. but it works and that's the most important part :D
Thanks again for all the help :bowdown:
It looks ok, and it is great to have a picture of it:thumbsup:
I do not know about the tables, I just use pictures for that..
@drbrain
Anytime, happy to help. Does the caps lock LED work properly?
Octapus look aside (which is unavoidable), you've done a great job there :)
The other solution would be to slice the relevant section of the keyboard ribbon very accurately and permutate the filaments themselves into the connector, but I am not sure about the mechanical stability of this idea.
@jvdbossc
If all else fails, pictures will surely do the job :) I was like "what the...", thought a fixed width font would solve it but apparently the parser ignores consecutive spaces and treats them as one. Anyway, I just saw that "posting rules" states HTML code is off but BB code is on and there IS a [table] directive there, so I guess ti can be done the proper way :)
The caps lock LED doesn't work, no...
But it functions correctly otherwise.
Is it possible to fix the LED? Not really needed but if it can be done that would be great... :)
I thought about modding the keyboard ribbon instead but that probably wouldn't have been much easier.
And keeping the A600 keyboard intact seemed like a better idea, they're more rare than A1200 stuff.