Vintage Keyboard Hardware Signal Capture & Emulation

[MightyFrame]

Please forgive my noobie question here, and if there is a more appropriate channel to post it, or if it's already being discussed elsewhere, please do direct me.

I like to restore rare vintage computers. Most of my interest revolves around items manufactured in the 1980s by Convergent Technologies.

One of the biggest problems I have is getting a rare machine, and not having the proprietary keyboard it takes. And, all of their keyboards were proprietary to their machines, dumb terminals, etc. So, when I actually find a rare keyboard for one of these rare machines, I'd like to "capture" the output signals for each key, and document the pinouts for the proprietary keyboard plug.

My goal is to use those signal captures to create a hardware keyboard emulator/adapter. The emulator/adapter would then receive signals from a modern keyboard, and "convert" the correspondingly mapped keys to the proprietary keyboard signals required by the rare vintage machine for keyboard input.

This page on my blog/site explains a little more about what I'm trying to accomplish:

http://unixpc.blogspot.com/2017/03/at-u ... oding.html

Has anyone here developed a process by which this is done? I feel I should ask before re-inventing the wheel, so to speak.

Thank you again everyone,
-AJ
http://MightyFrame.com

[Techno Trousers]

It sounds to me like what you want is the equivalent of a Soarer adapter, but in reverse. If you read through this thread, it may give you some ideas. Unfortunately, Soarer disappeared some time ago, and didn't open source his code. I'm not sure if anyone has reverse engineered it yet.

viewtopic.php?t=2510

[Daniel Beardsmore]

It was reverse engineered, but the person who did so (name possibly began with 'A' — there's a topic about it) didn't want to release the reverse-engineered code until he felt that it was safe/appropriate to do so, since we've not been able to establish what happened to Soarer (not even through knowing his name and address, as someone does — even posting him a letter yielded no response).

[Ratfink]

At some point, it might just be safe to assume that Soarer shuffled off this mortal coil.

Here's a link to the thread you mentioned, Daniel.

[seebart]

It was reverse engineered, but the person who did so (name possibly began with 'A' — there's a topic about it) didn't want to release the reverse-engineered code until he felt that it was safe/appropriate to do so, since we've not been able to establish what happened to Soarer (not even through knowing his name and address, as someone does — even posting him a letter yielded no response).

At some point, it might just be safe to assume that Soarer shuffled off this mortal coil.

Here's a link to the thread you mentioned, Daniel.

Right, I believe that reverse-engineered code should be released, how long do "we" want to wait? We'll likely never find out what happened to Soarer.

[MightyFrame]

Well, everyone, I had absolutely no idea that my question might lead down this road, but I must say, truth is truly stranger than fiction.

All I can say is I appreciate the great responses everyone is giving me here, sincerely. It is doing at least this for me: It is telling me that if I develop this process to use an emulated keyboard with a vintage hardware processor (vs a vintage keyboard with a modern processor), that I am truly not re-inventing the wheel, or re-inventing what someone else has done, that at least is known about.

You guys all seem really top-notch, and I do appreciate it. Whatever comes of the Soarer code, I wish both the code, and Soarer, the best, independently.

-AJ