Any info on the Toshiba T1500?

[The Laptop Lagger]

So the other day whilst scrolling through the depths of Ebay I happen upon this vintage XT looking keyboard. Labelled Toshiba T1500
Intrigued I send the bidder a lowball opening bid. and after some talking and the mention of an AT101W for sale we end up agreeing on a price.
Now I knew nothing about this board going in. Total gamble. So, imagine my surprise when I receive the board a few days later, take of a cap, and am greeted by a very familiar sight. An ALPS slider!
Indeed I found out after purchase that this keyboard uses old Alps SKCL Green linear switches! Which REALLY piqued my curiosity,
Now why I write all this is simple. I want to know if anyone has any further information on this particular keyboard. All the info I could find online was a dead forum thread regarding the Toshiba T1500 Personal Computer and a weird magazine ad.
Furthermore, would a basic XT to USB converter work for this particular board? Like tinkerBOY's IBM AT/XT converter. I'm not entirely sure if it's an IBM compatible, or if it sends out entirely unique scancodes. I'd really like to try daily driving this board on modern hardware!
Thank you for reading, if you have any info post it below. Following are a few pictures of the board in question.

20211209_175200.jpg (3.19 MiB) Viewed 21538 times

[The Laptop Lagger]

Apologies for bumping this but I figured I'd post an update,
I've recently gotten a basic Din 5 to PS/2 passive adapter, in the hopes that this board would just use the AT protocol and be easily converted to PS/2 without any active converter. (The board has lock lights which was an indicator to me that it at least isn't XT)
Whilst power does get through to the board no data seems to actually make it to my PC. I can sometimes get the lock lights to turn on/off but that's about it.
Does this mean that I'm dealing with something proprietary Toshiba here? Or should I roll the dice and get an AT/XT to USB converter. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer.

[SOTGO]

Given the layout I would have assumed it used the XT protocol. Sometimes XT era boards will control the lock lights keyboard side, like on the Zenith Z-150, and still use the XT protocol, so I do think there is a chance of success. Be warned that XT protocol boards have been known to not work without additional resistors in the converter, like the Z-150 and the DC-2014, so sometimes the prebuilt converters sold by Orihalcon may not work. I have no idea if this is the case for this board, however.

[The Laptop Lagger]

Given the layout I would have assumed it used the XT protocol. Sometimes XT era boards will control the lock lights keyboard side, like on the Zenith Z-150, and still use the XT protocol, so I do think there is a chance of success. Be warned that XT protocol boards have been known to not work without additional resistors in the converter, like the Z-150 and the DC-2014, so sometimes the prebuilt converters sold by Orihalcon may not work. I have no idea if this is the case for this board, however.

That would actually explain why the lock lights sometimes worked when it has power! Alright brilliant. Would something basic like the tinkerBOY converter work? It uses Soarer's firmware and would save me the headache of soldering it up myself, especially cause I've previously had quite a lot of trouble trying to make an ADB converter (which also resulted in me buying a tinkerBOY in the end)

[hellothere]

I'm the one with the Zenith Z-150 adventure.

You'd probably have to ask tinkerboy @ tinkerboy.xyz or through ebay if his implementation of the Soarer's Converter includes resistors. There's another thread in here, somewhere, where someone was asking if Orihalcon's implementation of the Soarer's Converter has resistors, so you might want to look for that.

My fun with the Z-150 is documented here. I've got a pretty straight-forward set of instructions on how to build Hasu's TMK Converter listed there, too. While I do now have a bit of experience putting together Soarer's and TMK converters, I think putting them together is pretty easy to do and I'm looking forward to playing with key mapping with an IBM terminal and TMK, as I can use a GUI to do that.

Note that the Z-150 does have an extra line for reset. I have no idea if the Toshiba has that. You might also have a clicker/buzzer. The TMK on the Z-150 has functionality for beeping built-in, although that may just be something inherent to the keyboard and not the controller.

[The Laptop Lagger]

I thank you for your insanely useful advice! I shall continue to do some digging and see what I find, maybe I can figure out if the keyboard was manufactured by a 3rd party and potentially relates to a different model number somehow.

[TheInverseKey]

This keyboard was manufactured by Alps Electric and this is a great find! There is very little documentation on Toshiba Personal Computers.

If you have any more information about the system that this came from or more pictures of the keyboard's inside that would be amazing.

[The Laptop Lagger]

This keyboard was manufactured by Alps Electric and this is a great find! There is very little documentation on Toshiba Personal Computers.

If you have any more information about the system that this came from or more pictures of the keyboard's inside that would be amazing.

Ask and you shall receive!
Baffled how I didn't notice the Alps Electric logo sooner btw, silly me!

[Willy4876]

I'm under the impression that pretty much all old Toshiba keyboards (including their laptops) were Alps made. I haven't actually come across a Toshiba with Alps in it yet that wasn't made by Alps.

[Mattelec]

Pretty similar to a Canon keyboard I have

[TheInverseKey]

Spoiler:

This keyboard was manufactured by Alps Electric and this is a great find! There is very little documentation on Toshiba Personal Computers.

If you have any more information about the system that this came from or more pictures of the keyboard's inside that would be amazing.

Ask and you shall receive!
Baffled how I didn't notice the Alps Electric logo sooner btw, silly me!

Thanks for all the pictures, still trying to figure out all the Toshiba Personal Computers as there is very little information about them.

[Muirium]

Toshiba forgot them the moment they got into IBM clone portables.

[The Laptop Lagger]

Spoiler:

This keyboard was manufactured by Alps Electric and this is a great find! There is very little documentation on Toshiba Personal Computers.

If you have any more information about the system that this came from or more pictures of the keyboard's inside that would be amazing.

Ask and you shall receive!
Baffled how I didn't notice the Alps Electric logo sooner btw, silly me!

Thanks for all the pictures, still trying to figure out all the Toshiba Personal Computers as there is very little information about them.

Frankly all I ever found out was a weird thread burried away in the archives of the internet. Never really did find any conclusive information on this Keyboard or the accompanying computer however

[jejex]

necro, but did you succeed in the end? seems like a great boards, waiting for updates and good luck!

[The Laptop Lagger]

necro, but did you succeed in the end? seems like a great boards, waiting for updates and good luck!

Hey! Haven't gotten around to buying a converter yet, the project has been shelved whilst I focus on expanding my current collection. Thanks for the interest though!

[jensma]

necro, but did you succeed in the end? seems like a great boards, waiting for updates and good luck!

Another necro; did anyone of you succeed? I recently got a T1500 and soarer's converter on its bare bones pretty much does nothing

edit: I'll investigate myself, I have some ideas

edit: the ideas:
I traced around the board:


the CPU of the keyboard has to be resettet from the PC. I think the unpopulated IC was meant to do this, but apparently Toshiba was betting on PCs doing tht job.
Since Soarer's converted has reset capacities I'll test if that signal manages to start the cpu. If not I'll try to find a drop in IC for the unpopulated space. If I can't find one I'll propably fashion a small drop in board with an uC.

[hasu]

necro, but did you succeed in the end? seems like a great boards, waiting for updates and good luck!

Another necro; did anyone of you succeed? I recently got a T1500 and soarer's converter on its bare bones pretty much does nothing

edit: I'll investigate myself, I have some ideas

From pics the T1500 keyboard seems to use XT reset line. You need to have reset line on your converter to initialize the keyboard, probably.

[jensma]

necro, but did you succeed in the end? seems like a great boards, waiting for updates and good luck!

Another necro; did anyone of you succeed? I recently got a T1500 and soarer's converter on its bare bones pretty much does nothing

edit: I'll investigate myself, I have some ideas

From pics the T1500 keyboard seems to use XT reset line. You need to have reset line on your converter to initialize the keyboard, probably.

Yeah, I'll try that when I'm home this evening.



The unpopulated party are a pretty common reset signal generator, C1 should determine the pulse length. No idea about the IC though. I thought about a 556, but I'm not sure about it. A 7414 was my second guess, but that's nonsense.

update: I created the reset signal with an arduino, working fine. I'll fashion something in the next days and document it.

[jensma]

Heya,

I fiddled around with some cpu watchdogs, but their pinout is just to wild. It kinda looks like a rat's nest if you solder them to the pcb. So I opted for an uC in the end.





I used an attiny45. I started at some nanoseconds for the reset delay, but 1ms was the sweet spot in the end. That's the code:

Code: Select all

unsigned long delayTime = 1; // #reset delay

void setup() {
  pinMode(0, OUTPUT); // 0 = physical pin5 on attiny
  digitalWrite(0, LOW);
  delay(delayTime);
  digitalWrite(0, HIGH);
  delay(delayTime);
}

void loop() {
}

Note that if anyone wants to replicate this:
To archieve a nice drop in replacement you need to disable the reset for the attiny itself. If you disable it you only have to reroute the GND to pin 4. And you have to change the code accordingly.
Buuut if you disable it you can't program the attiny anymore. So if you're anxious, just bend the leg outwards of the socket. Or snip it. In that case you have to route physical pin 5 of the attiny to solder pad #1 on the pcb. I did it with a white wire pictured above.

[The Laptop Lagger]

necro, but did you succeed in the end? seems like a great boards, waiting for updates and good luck!

Another necro; did anyone of you succeed? I recently got a T1500 and soarer's converter on its bare bones pretty much does nothing

edit: I'll investigate myself, I have some ideas

edit: the ideas:
I traced around the board:


the CPU of the keyboard has to be resettet from the PC. I think the unpopulated IC was meant to do this, but apparently Toshiba was betting on PCs doing tht job.
Since Soarer's converted has reset capacities I'll test if that signal manages to start the cpu. If not I'll try to find a drop in IC for the unpopulated space. If I can't find one I'll propably fashion a small drop in board with an uC.

Yooo holy crap another T1500!!!
This is so cool!! I never got mine working *but* did manage to get it tested on original hardware (went to a local computer museum where I got it to talk to a PC XT Clone)

There I found out that the CTRL key is currently dead which led me to shelf the project altogether (having too many mechanical keyboards by now)

Super super interested in your progress! Thank you so much for your work!