I’ve been looking for a ‘parallel’ keyboard for some time, modern PC keyboards use a serial interface (AT, PS/2 and USB). Older computers used a parallel keyboard design. In an earlier post I mentioned I used a PIC processor to convert the serial stream from a PS/2 keyboard to an 8-bit parallel keyboard.
Saturday I’m looking over the used stuff at RePC in Tukwila, Wa. Occasionally I find interesting stuff and when the price it right it finds its way home from me. Recently I’ve picked up two S-100 backplanes with huge linear power supplies, an old RS-232 protocol analyzer that yielded several Z-80 chip sets and an 8-inch floppy disk drive. Anyhow, Saturday I came across two things I had been looking for, the first being five 15 minute ‘computer’ cassette tapes, these are NOS (New Old Stock) and will be useful once I get the cassette interface for the Apple 1 completed. The real gem is a parallel ASCII keyboard from a Franklin Apple II clone, it’s a KeyTronic parallel keyboard and is perfect for the Apple 1. I’ve been looking for a keyboard like this for 2+ years. I wire-wrapped up a little converter to for it (adapts it’s pin out to the Apple 1 pin out) along with the required RESET and CLEAR switches.
I also received the 8VAC 5-Amp transformer I found on EBay.
Today I wired up the transformers, added the parallel keyboard and fired it up. I pressed CLEAR the RESET, got the system prompt and started to type. The keyboard works! It’s so much nicer having an actual parallel keyboard, it feels so old school and takes me back to my days on VAXen and PDP-11s using VT-100s.
The Apple 1 clone is out in my shop running a simply test program. SWEET!!!!!!
Recently on EBay I picked up an NOS unassembled S-100 cassette adapter with manuals. I’ve got the parts for it on order, the cassette tapes will be fun to play with on my S-100 system as well.
