Replacement Keyboard - Success! + Story?

[mjelic]

Just wanted to give a big shout-out to Alan Laughton for selling me his spare replacement keyboard. Finished it last night after a bit of bug hunting (why would I not solder the M key... Only the M key, of all keys???) I will order a new one and have it reserved for returning to you, if you ever need it, Alan.

And I would like to tip my hat at whoever designed this replacement kit! Man, that took some engineering and how clever was it that the original motherboard had those double row of pins that this could plug into!?! I would love to hear the story of why that header was there (who decided it should be there), what the pinouts for it are (I assume it doesn't include a reset line?) and who was the genius that engineered the replacement. More details of how it came to fruition would be great!

Here is a photo of it all complete... And typing some text into some strange screen you can get to from the disk monitor.

[MbeeTech]

Great to see that the keyboard is all working now. It makes a huge difference to have a reliable keyboard on the bee.
Thanks for your comments about the keyboard replacement kit design. I wanted to make it as easy as possible to make and install.
The 20 way connector on the baseboard certainly helped in that. The non-premium machines have a number of flying wires that need
to be attached to the baseboard instead.
That connector was designed for adding another keyboard (forward planning) if an external keyboard was required, or a different keyboard was designed to fit
the premium baseboard in the 256TC case etc.

BTW, that 'strange' screen you found in monitor is actually the terminal command that provides a 300 baud serial terminal.
'T' <Enter> enters 300 baud full duplex (keys typed go out the serial port but not echoed to screen)
'TH' <Enter> enters 300 baud HALF duplex (keys typed go out the serial port and also appear on screen)
if you want 1200 baud instead, use 'U'<Enter> and 'UH'<Enter> respectively.
Terminal mode uses 80 x 24 character screen format.

[mjelic]

LOL! What a fluke that I typed "THIS KEYBOARD IS GREAT" and then it flipped to the terminal in half duplex!
Great engineering!

Oh and, when is the 256TC case going to be made available for purchase?

[MbeeTech]

Oh and, when is the 256TC case going to be made available for purchase?

I'm not sure whether you are referring to my comments about the 20 way connector on the premium baseboard in regards to external keyboard / different keyboard in the 256TC case?
I was suggesting that these were possible reasons why the 20 way connector was implemented on that version of the PCB, not alluding to support for a new keyboard for the premium series in the 256TC case.

I have designed a new keyboard to go in the 256TC case (as seen at the ACMS event) but that has been designed for use with the new models : 256TC-Plus (same board as the Classic Plus, but the keyboard section 
of the PCB does not get loaded.)

You can keep up to date on progress of the new models in this thread : 

https://microbeetechnology.com.au/forum/...hp?tid=449

[ChickenMan]

Thanks Mark, was good to catch up in Sydney a couple weeks back, sorry I never really got to chat though. Thanks but I dont need a replacement keyboard but good to hear you got it installed and working eventually. I did the same/similar on my first kit keyboard installation somehow forgetting to solder a couple keys. I have a Standard keyboard kit also here as about to replace the keys in my PC85, most keys work but many you have to wiggle first to get them working and the longer between use, the more keys that need the wiggle treatment.

Now its time to get a Gotek as your Floppy drive and you wont know yourself, the sky is the limit to what you could do now. The TEC-1 will become a distant memory (only joking ).

Alan

[mjelic]

Ewan: I really do love the look of the new case an keyboard!
But I have to say I don't have time or patience to learn a new processor, after the Z80. What I would dearly love, with all this new-fangled surface mount thingoes is a super-fast, beefed up Z80 that could handle high rez graphics in lots of colours. I don;t want to learn C or any other language. I know Z80 Assembler and Basic, and those are the programming languages I will die with.

Alan: So is there anyone that wants these old keys for any reason or do I just throw them away?
I actually did buy a Gotek and have it installed. Just not had the machine in one piece to try it out. Now what I have to learn is how to make a "boot disk" on a USB stick and have any other programs on there. Lots of learning to do. I also scored a ROM Core board off Ewan... Just having some issues getting it to work in my machine but once I do have it running, I will have some fun designing a few things.

>The TEC-1 will become a distant memory

Ah... Imagine if you could COMBINE the two! The top of the Microbee having 6x 7segment displays, a ZIF socket to change the boot rom, and maybe a 4x20 LCD screen. Maybe an 8x8 LED matrix... Throw on a CF or SD card interface for storage... And you have the perfect portable Z80 trainer.

Yes, I have plans...

[ChickenMan]

90% of the disk images we have in the Repository are bootable images, just grab what every you want and copy it to the Gotek's USB. if there is anything your looking for particularly thats not there, let me know as I may be able to help still

[mjelic]

OK... I remember getting a link tot he repository... Now to find it again.

Oh, btw Ewan: Those little 7805 regulator replacements in the keyboard kit are fantastic!! Can you make those available so we can replace all of those little heat generators in the Bee! Could use them in my TEC-1 too! I'll order half a dozen!

[ChickenMan]

You should have an email from Ewan regarding access and password.

[MbeeTech]

Ewan: I really do love the look of the new case an keyboard!
But I have to say I don't have time or patience to learn a new processor, after the Z80. What I would dearly love, with all this new-fangled surface mount thingoes is a super-fast, beefed up Z80 that could handle high rez graphics in lots of colours. I don;t want to learn C or any other language. I know Z80 Assembler and Basic, and those are the programming languages I will die with.

The Classic-Plus / 256TC-Plus will have more colors, and full 4-bit plane graphics that is compatible with the standard and premium series graphics but the restriction of colour per character cell removed.
As far as colours go, it will have 16 foreground and another 16 separate background colours (up to 32 total on screen at one time) from a palette of 4096.  Resolution up to 640 x 256 with this colour scheme.
The Z80 will run at up to 10Mhz, so around 3 times the speed of a regular bee.  Running normal Microbee CP/M / Graphic Shell.
BTW, the second processor is a MC68000 core (same as Amiga, Mac, Atari ST etc) which can run CP/M-68K  
If you enjoy Z80 assembler, you'll love M68K assembler.