Amstrad CPC464 Hack Keyboard

[david656]

Hi,

recently my amstrad died and i decied "oooo lets make it into windows!"

now i have finished altering the crappy mono tape drive to stereo so i can listen to some crappy tapes on it ! and that part cost me nothing as i had a old walkman kicking about BUT before i spend a lot of money on a nano-itx or pico-itx i want to make sure i can rig the built in keyboard up to the PC

i would use a Ultimarc keyboard encoder but i assume that will not map the full keyboard,

can i use a normal keybaord chip out of a keyboard or may it be mapped different ?

as it happens all cpc464's i have seen seem to be a new model than mine as mine has a heavy chipboard keyboard instead of a membrane type

any ideas ?

cheers

[Minwah]

Sorry, not sure about whether you could hook the keyboard up to an encoder, but it sounds possible...I would ask Andy @ Ultimarc.

I have a CPC6128...haven't used it for some years tho.  Don't suppose you remember a game which had a piece of music called 'Nola' in it do you? I've been wracking my brains...I'm pretty sure it was one of those Amsoft ones which come with the computer, but can't quite remember.

[abzman2000]

if you fully trace out the pins on your standard pc keyboard, then cut the traces on the cpc464 (assuming the board is one big pcb, and not a mombrane keyboard) and solder 2 wires to each button, and those wires to the proper pins on the keyboard encoder it should be fine.  it's easier than it sounds, the tracing is just time consuming.  hint: crack open a modern membrane keyboard and use different colored sharpies to trace the lines on the membranes

[NiN^_^NiN]

Wouldnt it just be alot easier to use a KeyWiz and solder wires directly onto the points on the keyboard? that would the the easiest, simplest and quickest route

[abzman2000]

I am only familiar with this method, so I cannot say about that option, but my way only costs you one keyboard, some solder, and some electricity