Western Europe ASCII Keyboard Tester PCB and Kit

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Hi all,

As discussed on Applefritter (see https://www.applefritter.com/content/ascii-keyboard-tester) I have finished the testing of my second revision of the ASCII Keyboard Tester. This tester can be used to test early parallel ASCII keyboards and has Apple-1 and Apple ][ keyboard connectors. Tested it with a Datanetics replica keyboard for the Apple-1 and an Apple ][ keyboard, all works well!

I can offer a plain purple PCB for € 9,- (also green on request) and an unsoldered kit (PCB + all parts as pictured) for € 23,-. This is excluding the cost for shipment. I am based in The Netherlands. For larger volumes I can give a discount. Send me a PM when interested.

Regards from Holland,

Bobby

 

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Hi all again,

I finished testing for the One Byte Hex Display as well.

This board can be used stand-alone or on top of the ASCII Keyboard Tester. For stand-alone usage you can provide 5V DC on the Power Supply pins and attach an 7 or 8 bit TTL input on the Data/Clock pins. These pins should be left unconnected when using on top of the ASCII Keyboard Tester as it gets all the power and data from the connecting socket. Through the jumper you can select if you want to display 7 bits only (for ASCII) or 8 bits. The 8 bit LEDS on the ASCII Keyboard Tester are always synchronized with this setting, so the Hex display corresponds with the LEDs.

Plain purple PCBs I can offer for € 7,50 and an unsoldered kit (PCB + all parts as pictured) for € 19,-.

For a set of PCBs (ASCII Keyboard Tester + One Byte Hex Display) it is € 16,- and for a set of both kits € 39,-.

This is all excluding the cost for shipment. I am based in The Netherlands. Send me a PM when interested.

 

[wperko]

Hi,

About a year ago I made a generic USB Keyboard to ASCII tester ... I hadn't thought about selling it as it's so simple to build. After seeing your tester, and thinking about it, I may sketch a dedicated board just to make it more convenient for the future.

.

 

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Hi Walt (checked out your website ;-)),

Have not seen your project before, thanks for showing it. For me it was not that simple actually, as I have a software background. But it was fun to design and build.

There have been some projects too about converting serial to parallel keyboard interfaces. See Willegal's project as well: http://www.willegal.net/appleii/appleii-kb-int.htm. Also interesting to take that into account, it takes PS/2 or RS232 and outputs parallel ASCII.

 

[Hugo Holden]

I built a tool for testing early keyboards with parallel data output, such as the one used in the SOL-20. Photo attached with two variants of the Avago displays.

I found it helpful to use Hex displays, either the original TIL311 or the later ones used by Avago, here is the article detailing the design, it starts on page 19 of this .pdf :

www.worldphaco.com/uploads/HARDWARE_DIAGNOSTIC_TOOL_FOR_THE_SOL.pdf

 

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Hi Hugo,

Cool design, thanks for sharing. Those Avago's look very nice, but are quite expensive unfortunately.

I also love your in-depth documentation of it!

Regards,

Bobby