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From: Thomka.es@XEROX.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.apple
Subject: Re: Apple Keyboards
Message-ID: <835@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 13-Jun-84 13:51:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.835
Posted: Wed Jun 13 13:51:00 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 15-Jun-84 02:14:05 EDT
Lines: 80

There are lots of ways to give yourself a REAL FULL keyboard, on your
Apple.

One way is to connect any cheap fully encoded ASCII keyboard to your
present 16pin socket (A7) on the Apple motherboard.  You will have to be
sure that there is a keyboard stobe (positive pulse) at pin 2 for each
key press.  Just hook up the proper TTL lines to the proper pins.  Check
out the Apple reference manual
	The problem is you may end up not having a RESET key, then,  and
	the left and right arrows may not be correct (you could use ctrl-H for
	left arrow, and ctrl-U for the right arrow).

Another way is: to buy an aftermarket Apple-type fully encoded ASCII
keyboard.  These can be found in price ranges between $75 and $400.
There are some fairly decent ones for about $150.  Almost always these
keyboards give you some real nice features too.

Another way is: to buy a new encoder board (assumming that you have one
of the later 2-piece keyboards).  Replace that old encoder board, which
hangs under the keyboard and above the motherboard, with a better one
made by Videx.  That gives you full ASCII keyboard, plus some real nice
things, like macros and automatic repeats.

Or you can modify your present encoder board (assumming that you have
one of the later 2-piece keyboards).  There is already a cheap way to
add one DPDT switch to it and get an UPPER/lowercase keyboard with the
shift key really working.  Look at the board and you'll see a place to
add a switch, after you cut some etches that are already there.  There
are still about 10 keys you won't be able to enter (like {}|\ etc.) but
you'll be real close and you can't beat the price.
--------------------------------------

A problem you'll have with all of those solutions will show up when you
try to enter lowercase characters in Apple DOS or AppleSoft.  There is a
small bit of code, in the monitor, called CAPTST, that converts any
lowercase characters to UPPERcase.  Here you can either buy or make your
own modified monitor or simply load the Applesoft and monitor into your
16K card and change location $FD83 to $FF (unmodified $FD83 is $DF).
Doing this you can then enter lowercase in Apple DOS or AppleSoft.  By
the way, most word processors and applications packages requiring
lowercase, CP/m is another, do not use the Apple monitor, thus there is
no problem caused by the $FD83 being $DF.  I say that because you
usually don't need to modify your monitor since those applications
packages can read your UPPER/lowercase keyboard directly, they don't
care what kind of monitor (whether or not it converts lower to
UPPERcase) you have.

Another problem you will have in regular Apple 40 column mode is that
you will not be able to see lowercase characters unless you have a
lowercase display chip.  Such as a Dan Paymar or, as I recommend, the
Lazer Lowercase Plus board.

What will you see if you don't have lowercase?    abcdef looks like
!"#$%&

Without having a lowercase keyboard how can you see if you have a
lowercase display chip?  Enter this simple one line:
PRINT CHR$(100)

If a lowercase "d" prints, you have a lowercase display chip.  If a "$"
prints, then you don't have a lowercase display chip.

A more extensive test would be to print all the displayable
(non-control) ASCII characters.  Enter this program:
10 FOR A = 33 TO 127
20 PRINT CHR$(A);
30 NEXT

RUN
You should see is all the characters;
starting at the special characters !"# and numbers etc.,
through the UPPERcase ABC's etc.,
next getting the special characters [ \ ] ^ and underline,
and finally going into the lowercase abc's,
ending with the last special characters { | } ~ and RUB.


!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

	Chuck