[Coco] Mechanical keyboard upgrades for the CoCo

Brian Blake random.rodder at gmail.com
Fri Aug 21 11:08:50 EDT 2015


I'm not picking on Ed specifically here, especially considering all of 
his contributions to the CoCo-Cause, but, I'm having a hard time 
justifying the recent comments regarding a mechanical keyboard being 
prohibitively expensive, and here's why.

We all have significant investments in our CoCo systems. Those of us 
running MPI's, floppy systems, hard disk systems, etc... have hundreds 
of dollars in them. When the items were available, you were looking at 
$100+ for a hard disk controller (not complete disk system) from Cloud 
9. An MPI on eBay is all over the map, but, I've seen them go for over 
$200 or as low as $50. How much will Jim's replacement MPI cost?

Why is it that paying $145 for a drop in keyboard seems scary? 
Especially considering a keyboard is used EVERY TIME the CoCo is turned 
on - the above equipment may or may not be.

Are PS/2 adapters wallet friendly? Hell yes they are! They also offer 
the ability to use the keyboard a bit of a distance from the CoCo due to 
the PS/2 keyboard's long cord. But, there's a lot to be said about 
keeping the CoCo original, or semi-original. If the original keyboard 
dies, and we still don't know about the mylar replacements yet, I don't 
think anyone can argue with the utility or durability of the switches Ed 
mentioned previously being on a drop in keyboard replacement. Having a 
drop-in ready keyboard to keep the CoCo semi-original would be a great 
item. I've got three CoCo's here with dead keyboards - while I wouldn't 
necessarily buy three replacements at once, I certainly would over time 
since I can only use one CoCo at a time, and I do like my hardware to be 
functional - I only have two CoCo's that I consider parts machines, and 
I bought them that way.

And to explain my admittedly biased though a little more, let's look at 
the cost of the 'original' replacement keyboards and compare them to 
today's dollar:

Keyboard                              1984 Cost 2015 Cost

Macrotron Pro                      $49.95 $115.78
Macrotron Premium            $89.95                        $208.50
Keytronic                                $89.95     $208.50
MarkData                               $69.95     $162.14
HJL-57                                     $79.95         $185.32


No, it's not any easier to swallow, but, $150 for a drop in replacement 
keyboard is not out of line compared to what was being sold 'back in the 
day.'

Ed,

Unless your plan is to make a keyboard that might be modular between 
several systems (which would be difficult at best considering keyboard 
layouts), I don't understand why a CPLD would have to be placed on the 
PCB. As long as the CoCo matrix is mapped out on the PCB and there's a 
cable with an adapter to fit the CoCo motherboard, it should be fairly 
simple.



On 8/21/2015 9:25 AM, Zippster wrote:
> For sure.  But if ease, economy, and practicality were the goal, none of us would be here.  :)
>
> We’d all just buy a windows box from Walmart and be done with it.
>
> But yeah, this project looks prohibitively expensive.
>
> - Ed
>
>
>


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