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Raspberry Pi Forum a Pi laptop?
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Related

a Pi laptop?

YT2095
YT2095 over 13 years ago

Although I have no real interest in the Pi myself, and am waiting for Olinuxino with BASIC on it instead, I`v come across something that may be neat for the Pi and users of other boards to have a go with.

I was given a broken old Amstrad Emailer, it`s like a fancy telephone really, and on there is the smallest little keyboard that still looks quite usable.

so I fixed the mailer enough to get some readings from the keyboard, and it`s PS2 compatible image

on the Inside of the telephone usint the keyboard lead terminates in a 4 pin plug.

Blue= +5 volts

Black= Ground

Green= Data

Red= Clock

 

the plug on the other end (the one that goes into the kbd), is, reading Left to Right with the polarity bump on the top;

Ground, Data, Clock and lastly +5v

 

I did a quick Google to see if there was anything to confirm this, and found this:

http://code.google.com/p/amstrad-mailboard/wiki/MailboardInterface

 

but this bit that may interest the Pi users is here; http://code.google.com/p/amstrad-mailboard/

so it`s perfectly possible to build your own Pi "laptop" now with one of these and a small 7" TFT screen! image

 

here`s a better picture of them with a Size scale:

 

image

against a 20:

image

I expect these things probably wouldn`t cost too much to buy second hand either, in fact I`v seen a guy on ebay selling them for the less than half the money shown in the above picture image

 

You would likely have to parse the keyboards data through a micro-controler or maybe some sort of linux program to get the correct ASCII code for each key, but that`s a fairly trivial task.

 

Have fun and let me know how you get on!

I`m going to try mine now on the DuinoMites PS2 connection and see what happens.

these could be a Great source of mini keyboards!

 

cheerio image

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  • YT2095
    YT2095 over 13 years ago

    Just a quick post to Confirm that these keyboards are indeed PS2 compatible and that I have mine working on my DuinoMite board right now using an old PS2 Mouse lead.

    granted all the letters are wrong (not where they should be), but they are Consistantly wrong, so it`s not a Random thing.

    so I`m going to guess that because these Pi boards are sold everywhere and are Linux based that there should be a keymap file somewhere, and a way to edit it.

    this of course will need the work of someone brighter than me as I have never even seen linux, but I think it should be Doable image

     

    so it`s at least One more possibility for you guys to play with!

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