exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Icky wrote: 14 Aug 2022 10:34 I thought the boards would end up costing a bit due to the size but its not a bad price at £30 for 5x unpopulated from JLC.

Not bad at all for that size!

Fingers crossed everything lines up now!

BW

One missing key cap to show the cherry key underneath.

So here are the features for the first board.

Keyboard cable is a header and its nearer the actual placement of the header on the ST motherboard.Thus will only need a header to header cable.


You will also notice a HDD header this is to plug in an IDE, ACSI, or other HDD LED line into the keyboard to change the FDD LED as its an FDD / HDD RGB LED and currently selectable between the two by a SPDT DIP switch. Thus in the below picture each switch from left to right selects RED / GREEN / BLUE and at the top is HDD and at the bottom is FDD.

So if R = ON position on the DIP switch , G = OFF, B = ON then HDD led shows as MAGENTA and the FDD would show as the opposite GREEN. Its pretty crude but I just wanted to have an initial switch option before actually playing with an RGB LED driver.


Small addition to the power LED, again using an RGB LED it has a DIP switch to select the colour


In terms of LED drivers I have built some in for keycap LEDs and these are controllable via an FPGA onboard that I am also looking to try out an IKBD implementation to eventually move away from the original chip.


Thats all the features for this board for now as I expect the first dev one to end up with loads of bodge wires on it :) but at least it will be a starting base to take this forward.

Some of you may notice that I have the components on the topside where as on the STFM keyboard they are on the bottom side. Well because the board is using cherry keys the depth is on the top so hence the placement.

This looks so, so good. Amazing work so far.

Looks fantastic!

BW

stween wrote: 17 Aug 2022 22:46 This looks so, so good. Amazing work so far.

Badwolf wrote: 18 Aug 2022 12:09 Looks fantastic!

BW

Thanks both, hoping this works. The key placement has been a right pain to get right and am half expecting there will still be something off. Well the boards are halfway through manufacturing. If I get them back in time I may bring a bare board to the Cyber Event that @mrbombermillzy is organising.

Steve wrote: 14 Aug 2022 13:17 @Icky Perhaps one of the coolest Atari projects. I assume it's a half-DIY based thing where you use the top-section ABS plastic of your pre-existing keyboard? So the user basically just can order a PCB & some cherry keys. How about the key-caps though. Sorry if this is already in the thread :)

@Steve, no using the original plastic as that will not work with the cherry keys, unless you have a Mega keyboard. Am looking at the cherry key plate to provide the rigidity and the surround for the whole board. Still working on that solution.

I had sourced a place that created keycaps that were similar to the main keys on the ST keyboard but they were going to look at doing the the spacebar and return key being the most awkward. It's been a while so need to go chase them. I have come up with another option on the board as the ST spacebar is 9U and today spacebars tend to be 6U. There is an option on the board to have a 6.25U spacebar and then two additional keys either side that are the same size as the Alt and CapsLock. I am calling these the Atari Keys :) I have plugged them into the keyboard matrix and plan to do testing to see if they can be read as independent keys. May need a TOS patch for that. Might not even work but would allow for using the shorter spacebar.

The 6.25U spacebar in the pic is nice bright and whiter up against the original spacebar:


Below is a render with the Atari Left and Atari Right keys and smaller spacebar:

Absolutely fantastic. Would be great to see a demo model at the 'Cyber Legends' LAN :)

I guess I have a lot of soldering to do this weekend. Am liking the black PCB.

Icky wrote: 25 Aug 2022 22:15 Am liking the black PCB.

Sexier than... well... sex? :fire: :fire:

BW

@Badwolf - I thought the H5 was a great board but I think in this black the H5 would be insane, shame they don't do that option for more than 2 layers.

I have never stopped looking at a board so much at the moment.

I know there are going to be things wrong with it but this is the alpha and the start of the journey. I was even thinking of popping the key caps off of one of my spare Mega ST keyboards as a trial for positioning etc.

EDIT: First offering up to an original board and the outside dimensions are correct.