Amiga 500 keyboard & Amiga 1200 compatibility

[DrValkyer]

I got an one Amiga 1200 mobo recently and of course without any kind of case or keyboard.  Since I got many dead/zombie Amiga 500s around here I wounder if I could use 500 keyboard on 1200.  I know that to use 500 keyboard controller on 1200 needs some solder hack on 1200 mobo but are 500 and 1200 keyboards in other ways fully compatible (keymapping etc.) ?

[cv643d]

Yes they are.

[rkauer]

Surelly works!:-D

 All you need to do is solder 4 wires on the mobo: data, clock, +5V and ground.

 Put this lines to a regular DIN, mini-DIN (PS/2) socket on the back of a case (original, towerized, wathever) and put the keyboard inside a desktop orig case or a 2000/3000/4000 keyboard case and that's it.:-D

Or just grab an orig 2/3/4k keyboard and wire it correctly.

Aminet helps a lot with this specific "hack".

[rkauer]

Try one of these:

http://www.aminet.net/hard/hack/1200ExKb.lha

http://www.aminet.net/hard/hack/A1300_V2.0.lha

http://www.aminet.net/hard/hack/ParKeyboard.lha

http://www.aminet.net/hard/hack/a1200kbpcb.lha

[rkauer]

But anyway you'll need a solution to the kb-reset problem: CTRL+A+A don't work anymore.

But you could try this hack:

http://www.aminet.net/hard/hack/KBD-Reset103.lha

[Jope]

If you leave in the original A500 keyboard controller board (it's going to be a tight fit), you can wire the keyboard reset from the controller board to the A1200 motherboard.

[willow]

Yes,

I had a go at this myself.

I've uploaded a small diagram of how easy it is to accomplish.




As long as Commodore used the same colour scheme with all their a500's then the colour of each wire correspond and are are shown in the diagram. Connect an a500 keyboard controller daughter circuit board to the keyboard MPU on an a1200 and it supports all the keypresses' available....

Hope it helps with your project.

[rkauer]

Helps ME a lot! :-D