C64 Keyboard – It’s alive – More!

Straight as a laser beam!

All the keys line up nearly perfectly. There’s a couple of ‘iffy’ ones that need re-soldering, but I’m far too excited to bother with little things like that

And. here’s the first fit…………..(complete with Spectrum magazine mouse mat!)

 

All that’s great that the hardware’s complete – But, the software will make this work.

Fortunately, the arduino has some great examples out there that turn a conventional C64 keyboard into a USB Keyboard!

https://github.com/dabonetn/C64USBKey/tree/master/C64Key3-ProMicro

http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=55650

are a couple that I’ve found – it should have been as simple as use my own schematic / matrix mapping – very easy – There’s enough pins on theArduino Pro Micro that I’m using for a 9×9 matrix – So, we get to have Restore also!

Keyboard matrixes are ‘fun’ when they don’t work first time….I’m not brand new to Arduino stuff but i’m no expert either, I just muddle through and try to figure out as I go along, Youtube’s great, as are dozens of other sources…

Arduino’s are ‘fun’ in that each pin has multiple pseudonyms depending on what’s doing the programming

I’ve found a superb link which proved extremely useful much later on in getting this going

https://deskthority.net/wiki/Arduino_Pro_Micro#Pinout

 

And, the main culprit –

The original Arduino map had the following in for the rows and columns, this 8×10 matrix has enough positions to allow joysticks to work also –

The code below simply says which pin of the arduino connects to which pin on the keyboard matrix above!

//int RowPinMap[8] = {12, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 5};
//int ColPinMap[10] = {13, 14, 15, 20, 17, 18, 19, 16, 1, 2};

 

And, after much, much trial, error, swapping numbers around and head scratching……This is what I needed to change my code to

int RowPinMap[8] = {9, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 2};
int ColPinMap[10] = {10, 16, 14, 21, 18, 19, 20, 15, 1, 0};
Which, resulted in the Arduino being recognised in Windows and………..

 

Buzzing! – BUT, there’s a bit of a problem.

This code doesn’t work with the C64 Mini!

For some reason, the Mini’s mini-linux OS won’t recognise the Arduino’s USB ID and, Basic brings up nothing…..

Back to Google

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