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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 57m

Seems, those are the keys, which are breaking most often. I could only offer HELP.

Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 23h

Last weekend, I have found Raspberry Pi Pico 2W and I intended to upgrade my PicoCalc. I was aware, that the display might break, if I am not careful. When I finally assembled it, I have moved the mainboard a bit, pulled the display out of place and it broke. A replacement is already on its way.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 3d

I‘ll check my salvaging keyboard tomorrow.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 3d

I have once screwed up a whole batch of TI demo boards, which were built in my company. I had modified the layout and forgot to pack the inner layers into the gerber zip file, because I received a phone call while preparing production data. Of course they were fully assembled 🤣🤣🤣

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 7d

Testing the latency in USB keyboard mode with VICE and David’s Midnight Magic. This succss when there is latency. 120/sec scan rate feels as good as the regular keyboard. I have also added VICE soft and hard reset and attach disk and cartridge image to the additional two buttons.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 7d

The disadvantage of the solder pot is the long time, that is required to heat it up.

At work, the guy at the (a bit more advanced) solder pot was my best friend 🙂

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 8d

The broken Pro Micro is good enough for practicing with the solder pot. Quite nice for desoldering multi pin components. You need to mask with kapton tape, what you want to keep. Flux is helpful, too.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

Bought the C64 style key caps from Crazy Ali in January in the hope, I could do something meaningful with it. I have also ordered this keyboard, recently, because I really need a US layout keyboard. Now I have put the keycaps on. Nice keyboard. The original keycaps were not any bad.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

Sure. It is cheaper to remap the ROM than changing the hardware. I always tend to think of mass production 🙂

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

Well, they did it in the C16. You could move it to these positions and move the pound key and the @ beside the space bar. Del and home in the position of the old cursor keys position. etc. you don’t need to remap the ROM. A drop in replacement keyboard is the best choice.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

Yes, that, I did not consider. You are right.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

The new cursor keys could pull The bases of two transistors high, which are parallel to the shift key switch and the respective cursor key switch.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

Hmm… you could put a 2U right shift beside the 7U spacebar, reduce the left left shift to 1U, to move the bottom keys left 1/2U left to get space for two new cursor keys. It would require some transistor trickery, I think.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

Everything in history eventually comes to an end. E.g. the NSDAP didn’t survive the fail Austrian painter for a long time. Time is ticking. They have bet on the wrong horse.

Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

I usually give jobs to AI, that I don’t like, like reading old handwritings, or recently, creating a lookup table for the scan codes for the C64 keyboard (row&column -> scan code). Well, usually, the result is buggy. It is our future.

Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

I have constructed a frame around it, so it is compatible with the original.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

You don‘t want a kernal switch or reset beside the space bar. That would be a major source of fuck up (and I would be a champion of it). I suffer from the „stupid hands disease“.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

I first thought of connecting my extra buttons to C= and Shift, so they would be perfect for playing David’s Midnight Magic pinball. But it would just be useful for that. So I thought, it should be somehow connected to the pro micro. Now it’s for kernal switching with RESTORE etc.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

How will you make the user definable keys work? I have connected my keyboard matrix to a pro micro via a pcf8575 io expander, but that is way too slow. Probably a raspberry pi pico with more pins and more power would do that job.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

Reminds me to the telephone books in an old phone cell. 🙂

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 10d

So, today, I have finished the USB keyboard work package for a positional US keyboard layout for vICE and quickly added the German layout, too. It was fiddly to find some special keys, like the pound sign. When the thing is not connected to a C64 and does not detect scanning, it acts as a usb kbrd.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 11d

If you are making a USB keyboard, it is easy to screw up your source code. I have done that three times today. If the keyboard does not find scanning by a C64, it switches to HID USB keyboard (for VICE). I don’t know a few scan codes, yet. The rest works.

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 12d

AliExpress has pissed me off massively! In early September, I have bought a Pencil for my iPad for about 30€. It was defective. So I wanted to return it. They were not able to send me a return label, although I contacted the service twice. Now, they have refunded 10€ 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 19d

Whereever I go, I have to do tech support for other people, usually for computer or tv. Is it a rule, that people older than me have the most complicated setups :-)

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Sven Petersen @svenpetersen1965.bsky.social · 19d