Atari ST keyboard interface.

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arkadiusz.makarenko
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Atari ST keyboard interface.

Post by arkadiusz.makarenko »

I am complacently green with Atari ST/STe hardware, but I would like to poke a little keyboard/mouse/joystick interface o Atari STs.
In particular I am looking for what exactly Atari expects to receive from keyboard "port". Do I need to reverse engineer it, or this has already been done?
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Re: Atari ST keyboard interface.

Post by stephen_usher »

What is it you want to do? It's basically a serial interface.

If you want to connect a PS/2 keyboard then just get an Eiffel board.
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Re: Atari ST keyboard interface.

Post by terriblefire »

arkadiusz.makarenko wrote: Wed May 20, 2020 2:42 pm I am complacently green with Atari ST/STe hardware, but I would like to poke a little keyboard/mouse/joystick interface o Atari STs.
In particular I am looking for what exactly Atari expects to receive from keyboard "port". Do I need to reverse engineer it, or this has already been done?
Its a keyboard control interface a bit like the Amiga. I have an implementation in HDL somewhere...

https://github.com/terriblefire/atlys_a ... d6301emu.v

Dont know if thats a help is pretty basic
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Re: Atari ST keyboard interface.

Post by arkadiusz.makarenko »

stephen_usher wrote: Wed May 20, 2020 4:09 pm What is it you want to do? It's basically a serial interface.

If you want to connect a PS/2 keyboard then just get an Eiffel board.
I am thinking of porting my stm32 firmware for CD32 Riser to Atari ST. So in short USB HID devices, keyboard, mouse and HID compatible gamepads.
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Re: Atari ST keyboard interface.

Post by arkadiusz.makarenko »

terriblefire wrote: Wed May 20, 2020 4:30 pm
arkadiusz.makarenko wrote: Wed May 20, 2020 2:42 pm I am complacently green with Atari ST/STe hardware, but I would like to poke a little keyboard/mouse/joystick interface o Atari STs.
In particular I am looking for what exactly Atari expects to receive from keyboard "port". Do I need to reverse engineer it, or this has already been done?
Its a keyboard control interface a bit like the Amiga. I have an implementation in HDL somewhere...

https://github.com/terriblefire/atlys_a ... d6301emu.v

Dont know if thats a help is pretty basic
Thank you.

It is quite useful.
Keyboard codes are with comments. Only this is days of work.
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Re: Atari ST keyboard interface.

Post by Steve »

I also used this on an arduino to convert an ST keyboard to USB:

https://github.com/devonshire/arduino-a ... d-keyboard

(not sure if this also helps)
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Re: Atari ST keyboard interface.

Post by arkadiusz.makarenko »

Steve wrote: Wed May 20, 2020 9:24 pm I also used this on an arduino to convert an ST keyboard to USB:

https://github.com/devonshire/arduino-a ... d-keyboard

(not sure if this also helps)
Thank you.
It is other direction, but few bits are useful like resetting keyboard etc.
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Re: Atari ST keyboard interface.

Post by arkadiusz.makarenko »

I did spend some time poking what is happening there. Still don't fully understand what exactly can be sent to keyboard, and what response is expected. But at this point I know what baud rate is, how message looks like, and how keyboard, mouse in TOS, and joystick in games behaves.
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Re: Atari ST keyboard interface.

Post by ube »

master of the bare pcb
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Re: Atari ST keyboard interface.

Post by arkadiusz.makarenko »

ube wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 11:32 pm Here you go. ikbd documentation.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.14/i ... rikbd.html
Wow. Thank you.
Now there is no excuse ;) I have everything I need.
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