Those that know me on here will know that from time to time, the frustrated inventor in me comes out to play and I get these weird ideas. Yep, it's a Merlin's Musings moment again, but this one might just work and be cool at the same time.
I've got a broken Acorn Electron here with a dead motherboard, but the case is in good condition. It seemed such a shame to bin it, then I had a flash of inspiration; could it be turned into a keyboard to use on a PC, running an Acorn emulator?
Where am I going with this? Well, just think if all of the broken C64s, Electrons, Spectrums etc. could be fitted with a chip to read the original keyboard presses and codes and convert them to PS/2 compatible format?
Rip the original guts out of the machine, blank off the holes, fit a keyboard to PS/2 interface and Robert is your father's brother, as they say... I'm thinking of something along the lines of the MAME arcade cabinet interfaces, but rigged to use the original keyboard instead of a PC one....
You would be able to use a genuine keyboard to use with the emulator and it would 'feel' just like the real thing. That would be
to me.
I don't know how feasible or do-able this is, but I can't help thinking that Cloanto missed a marketing trick with their Amiga and C64 Forever packages; they could have bundled a replica keyboard that looked like a real Amiga or C64, yet plugged into the PS/2 interface and it could have made the package much more attractive and marketable.
(I've said that here now, so they can't nick the idea and I'm claim the idea as theirs, they should know about copyright
).
I know that Charlie was talking about keyboard matrix encoders over at EAB, but does anyone else think that this can be made to work? I have an Acorn Electron here that I'm willing to donate towards a prototype.
I've got a broken Acorn Electron here with a dead motherboard, but the case is in good condition. It seemed such a shame to bin it, then I had a flash of inspiration; could it be turned into a keyboard to use on a PC, running an Acorn emulator?
Where am I going with this? Well, just think if all of the broken C64s, Electrons, Spectrums etc. could be fitted with a chip to read the original keyboard presses and codes and convert them to PS/2 compatible format?
Rip the original guts out of the machine, blank off the holes, fit a keyboard to PS/2 interface and Robert is your father's brother, as they say... I'm thinking of something along the lines of the MAME arcade cabinet interfaces, but rigged to use the original keyboard instead of a PC one....
You would be able to use a genuine keyboard to use with the emulator and it would 'feel' just like the real thing. That would be
to me.I don't know how feasible or do-able this is, but I can't help thinking that Cloanto missed a marketing trick with their Amiga and C64 Forever packages; they could have bundled a replica keyboard that looked like a real Amiga or C64, yet plugged into the PS/2 interface and it could have made the package much more attractive and marketable.
(I've said that here now, so they can't nick the idea and I'm claim the idea as theirs, they should know about copyright
).I know that Charlie was talking about keyboard matrix encoders over at EAB, but does anyone else think that this can be made to work? I have an Acorn Electron here that I'm willing to donate towards a prototype.
