Kaypro reproduction keyboard

[StephenM]

Hi all,

I was given a Kaypro IV without a keyboard and was wondering if anyone has produced a reproduction keyboard for these old Kaypro's?

Thanks
Stephen

 

[durgadas311]

I've got a JAVA program that can mostly replicate the keyboard, using your PC's keyboard. You can connect to the Kaypro keyboard jack using a USB/serial dongle. While that's not very practical for running a Kaypro "for real", it does work for testing. Basically, it's a fairly simple set of character codes (mostly ASCII), sent over "TTL" RS-232 at 300 baud, and then producing a "beep" when the Kaypro sends a ^D to the keyboard. I can post URLs to more information if desired.

 

[StephenM]

Cheers that would be great!
Thanks.

 

[durgadas311]

I talk about doing keyboard diagnostics at the end of this document: http://sebhc.durgadas.com/kaypro/diags.pdf

I also talk there about how to hook up to the kaypro keyboard jack (as well as to the keyboard's jack) there.

The JAVA program I use is http://sebhc.durgadas.com/kaypro/VirtualKeyboard.jar, although that requires a third-party add-on JAVA package to access a host's serial ports (even if they are provided over USB). If you're actually planning on using this app, I'll dig up more instructions on that. If you're looking for example code, I can point you to the source.