keyboard creation

[Oren Beck]

>From: Charles Steinkuehler <charles at steinkuehler.net>
>To: Kendrick-LUG <kulua at linux2themax.com>
>CC: Kansas linux ers <kclug at kclug.org>
>Subject: Re: keyboard creation
>Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:26:08 -0600
>Kendrick-LUG wrote:
>>I was wondering if any one had an idea on how I could go about creating a 
>>keyboard.  some electronic experiance.  I tryed googling but found no good 
>>information.  Im intrested in making a keyboard that accepts more then 3 
>>keys input at a time.  possibly programible
>
>A bit more detail on what you're trying to do would help us provide you 
>with more specific answers...hopefully the general info below is of some 
>use.
>
>If you're making a USB keyboard, there are several microcontrollers 
>avaialble with USB ports, and you simply have to program them to behave 
>like a HID (human interface device) to get them to work with most anything 
>that supports USB keyboards.
>
>If you're wanting to create a PS/2 or AT keyboard, these communicate using 
>a 2 signal (clk and data) serial protocol, typically 'bit-banged' by the 
>microcontroller, but some parts have hardware support to offload part of 
>this.  Once you get basic communications going, you need to implement the 
>high-level keyboard controller protocol (ie: emit the proper scan codes and 
>responses to commands sent by the PC-side keyboard-controller).
>
>I think docs for all this should be available online.  I designed a PC PS/2 
>keyboard controller part into a custom system once, and it came with lots 
>of details on how everything worked.  The old IBM reference manuals for the 
>original PC and AT would probably also cover this.  I've also found the 
>BIOS manufactures to provide good documentation on low-level system stuff, 
>so you might check them out, as well.
>
>--
>Charles Steinkuehler
>charles at steinkuehler.net

A good prepackaged answer is the MAME controller board type . example being 
.

http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html

Which while not the cheapest of it's sort has many " best of breed "  
Features that make it the one.

Hacking a standard isolated controller can cost ^WAY^ more in 
sanity/personhours/stark failures .

Do not hesitate to e mail me on or off list with queries  .

Or phone me . 816.632.3695 but identify yourself as from the Linux group as 
my calls get screened .

Oren

" Microsoft - It might work . Or not  ."

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