PC to Amiga 1000 Keyboard adaptor

[Jope]

Acill wrote:
No you need a controller. The Amiga keyboards have a controller chip in th unlike PC "dumb" keyboards. If you get a "din" plug and wire it up to a A1000 keyboard it will work on any amiga. They are all the same.

Actually, a PC keyboard is just as intelligent as an Amiga keyboard.. The protocol is slightly more complex, involving bidirectional data transfer. The Amiga keyboard just spits out keycodes, but the PC keyboard wants some responses back from the computer every now and then..

A little googling around will give you the AT/PS2 protocol, the Amiga protocol can probably be found in the hardware manual.

[Jope]

nakey wrote:

Would just wiring the relavent pics from the PC keyboard to the Amiga one work? I recall that oen of the pins on the 5 pin DIN isn't connected

No, you need an adapter to convert the AT/PS2 protocol to the Amiga keyboard protocol.

You CAN fit any Amiga keyboard, however, if you just connect the correct lines together. :-)

[Jope]

artman wrote:
Please don't ANYONE even think of connecting a PC keyboard to an Amiga without a suitable adapter.  Did that myself one time and paid dearly for it.  Promptly fried the keyboard caps on the mobo, only got it running again with the help of Tm-D-Tek.  Your Amiga is much to precious to risk mucking up.  Do it properly the first time. :-D

Heh, we did that with an A4000 back in the day, but with no ill effects.. The PC keyboards have the same pinout, but of course we didn't get anything on the screen because of the protocol differences.