Serial connector on the next revision ?

[sporniket]

Now using a 240Mhz MCU to provide a BT Serial is a bit overkill. But it open the doors to other mods, BT keyboard and mouse ? Wifi ? ACSI SD Card ?

For bluetooth input and MIDI devices, I would rather replace the 2 ACIAs by one ESP32 (it just happens to be one of my projects, and yesterday evening I was checking that I have enough usable GPIOs for that). My plan is to get a bluetooth IKBD (using another ESP32 plugged to the IKBD powered with batteries/lipo cells/harry the hamster/whatever) (your sample code make me believe that it should be very doable), then implements an HID/MIDI BT host (I found sample/opensource code here and there for HID at least) to use BT keyboard, mices and game controllers.

[olivier.jan]

I'm also considering having an ESP32 for IKBD to provide native BT keyboard and mouse, but I haven't found too much information on HID support for ESP32. It's doable as I've found a few gamepad interfaces using ESP32, but it doesn't seem to be part of the standard lib, you'll have to implement HID yourself on top of lower protocols.

[sporniket]

I'm also considering having an ESP32 for IKBD to provide native BT keyboard and mouse, but I haven't found too much information on HID support for ESP32.

A legacy Atari hardware is linked as following :

Code: Select all

Atari ST <-[Data Bus + control lines]-> ACIA <-[wired serial link + control]-> HD6301

Thus my plan for BT ikbd :

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Atari ST <-[Data Bus + control lines]-> ESP32 'host' <-[Bluetooth Serial]-> ESP32 'device' <-[serial + control]-> HD6301

A simpler implementation if BT Ikbd is the only goal, would be to replace the wired serial link between the ACIA and IKBD by bluetooth serial. (My final plan is to ditch the ACIAs, thus I will need to interface with the data bus and the control signals from the ST)

[olivier.jan]

I was initially considering inserting the ESP32 between Ikbd and ACIA, but you're right, replacing the ACIAs could be good option.
Moreover, the 6850 is pretty simple to emulate and relatively slow, so it could be done in C.