Megalextoria
Retro computing and gaming, sci-fi books, tv and movies and other geeky stuff.

Home » Archive » net.micro.apple » apple keyboard hack
Show: Today's Messages :: Show Polls :: Message Navigator
E-mail to friend 
Switch to threaded view of this topic Create a new topic Submit Reply
apple keyboard hack [message #72494] Sat, 25 May 2013 10:27
jac is currently offline  jac
Messages: 3
Registered: May 2013
Karma: 0
Junior Member
Message-ID: <139@mouton.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Aug-84 10:42:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: mouton.139
Posted: Thu Aug 23 10:42:04 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Aug-84 04:33:13 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 62


I have finally gotten around to responding to the question posed as
to whether the APPLE II,II+.... could generate lower case.  Most 
people responded with the popular "one wire" mod.  This works fine
AS LONG AS THE PROGRAM IS DESIGNED TO USE THIS FEATURE.  What happens
if you want to use lower case with a word processor that supports real
shift keys, or an applications program that doesn't support the one
wire mod.  Weeelllll, it is very simple if you have the "two piece"
keyboard.  When Apple designed the II+, they fully intended it to have
lowercase.  However, they realized that this would make the II a
competitor with the III so they decided that the major selling point
of the III would be the fact that it supported lower case.  BUT, the
pc patterns were already made up, so they merely modified them a little.
Look at the encoder board.  You will see a location which looks like:

*  *=*

*  *=*

Or something like that (this is from memory so you'll have to be a
little creative when you look for the pattern.) Anywaaaaaayyyy, look
for a series of traces that looks like a double pole, double throw
switch could be installed.  cut the traces shorting the pins together-
they look like

=======\        /========
========\      /=========
=========\    /==========
==========\  /===========
===========\/============
===========/\============
==========/  \===========
=========/    \==========
========/      \=========
=======/        \========

They are expanded for clarity.  they really are about this big: =><= 
Cut these traces and install a switch.  In one position your keyboard
will generate lower case (you will have problems with generating an
'@' (at sign) because a shift P will give you c a capital P.  flick
the switch to the other position to get keys like this ] ^.......)
while in the other it wll generate upper case only.  NOTE THIS DOES
NOT, I REPEAT NOT, DISPLAY LOWER CASE, IT GENERATES IT.  If you have
a lower case character ROM, then you will have no problems.  otherwise,
you will see funny things.  If there is sufficient demand, I'll post
the contents of a lower case prom.

I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS MOD AS IT WILL VOID YOUR WARRENTY (if
there still are any valid II warrenties out there) AND A DEALER MAY REFUSE
TO FIX THE PROBLEM IF YOU SCREW UP.  I have made 1/2 dozen mods like this
and never had any problems.

Good luck, and don't hesitate to send mail to someone else if you
have problems.

Jonathan A. Chandross
Bell Communications Research
......allegra!mouton!jac

The above hardware hacks are probably -DEFINATELY- not encouraged or
endorsed by my employer.  All above opinions are strictly my own.  
  Switch to threaded view of this topic Create a new topic Submit Reply
Previous Topic: BITNET mail follows
Next Topic: Bug fixes in Pascal 1.2 - (nf)
Goto Forum:
  

-=] Back to Top [=-
[ Syndicate this forum (XML) ] [ RSS ] [ PDF ]

Current Time: Tue Apr 16 00:56:36 EDT 2024

Total time taken to generate the page: 0.06671 seconds