Build an adapter to use a cheap PS2 keyboard with a Tandy 1000!  

As a professional software developer, your code looks good for what it's having to do! Your comments are on point. 1) make it work 2) make it fast 3) make it pretty

This was a fantastic addition to the Tandy hobbyist community, Adrian. Even in the USA, this will help people who can't find original keyboards. Very nice work.

don't feel pressured to shorten your videos. geeks love the details. that's what defines us.

17:20 - Yeah, it, always confusing when you look up pinouts, I always triple and quadruple check if I’m soldering the wires to the right pins. When I’m soldering DIN connectors I make sure that I get a plug of the opposite sex too, because no matter how careful I am I get some of the pins melted out of their plastic housing. And yes, my iron is at the right temperature before you ask. So plugging it into a blank socket it helps with the pins not getting misaligned and they don’t wonder out.

The arduino board may as well be magic with all the crazy things it can do. Holy smokes, this project is incredible! Rock on sir, thank you!

I was just looking for a 1000 keyboard, so this solves my problem!!!

For some reason, I'm fascinated by all this old/retro/you name it stuff, and although I don't have any pc that is remotely old, I still watch every video of yours that comes out. Might be that I never had a computer like these to begin with, and the nostalgia hits even more seeing how stuff worked bach then.

Dude! You are so lucky you have those codes. I am working on a similar project for a ATT 6300 for an upcoming episode. It is really difficult to emulate the right codes for that machine. Especially since they seem to be more rare than the Tandy's that had the odd keyboard. Not to mention I don't have the original keyboard. Great work!

Wow, I wasn't expecting that Planet X3 appearance near the end of the video.

Arduino for the win! Nice job, Adrian.

Gotta love that Planet X3 test!

Very good work !! One fact. On arduino IF/ELSE is more difficult to read but execute faster than SWITCH/CASE.

Custom keyboard interfaces are fun, I've an oddball vehicle PC (with an industrial type single-board PC on an ISA backplane) which uses a 2-row DB15 for a combined PS/2 Mouse & Keyboard connection, which I need to build an adaptor for, so glad I found the manual for that SBC for the pinouts... :S

One request, Adrian, I notice you cut out of the video the wire stripping, tinning, soldering, etc., but personally I love watching those parts. Maybe you can consider leaving that in, or at least fast forward rather than cut?

That tiny old chip in the arduino has around 4 times the processing power of the 8088 used in the Tandy 1000.

Just stumbled over your channel, looks like I've got a lot of catching up. Great channel and much better than a number of others I have watched.

Im going to do this for my Tandy, but instead of making the adapter, I will install the board inside the keyboard shell. Thank you for the great videos!

@Adrian, I took a look of the code. I also did a little research on XT/AT/PS2 keyboards. I think the TANDY keyboard is using the XT "SET 1" that is probably still available in all PS2 keyboards. About your code I'm mostly worried about proper handling of key-pressed and key-released (make/break) messages. First, about the "SET 1". PS2 keyboards are two-way communicating and the host can send commands. Switching of the LEDs is done with host commands. There are also command that can change the working "SET". You may send "Set Scan Code Set = 1" (0xE0, 0x01) and then pass keys without translation. The layout may contain surprises, though. You may also check if sending "SET 1" codes to TANDY would produce keys that are otherwise missing. e.g. "KP *". This may avoid some hackery. About your code. 1. I do not understand why shift, capslock, num are only handled on make/press key on the PS2 side. It looks wrong. They should produce release/break codes, too. (Unless it has been explicitly disabled by host commands). Pressing shift, would lock it as been held, to release it you'd have to press it again. It would work like caps_lock with attitude . 2. Define all Tandy/Set1 keycodes and use their labels in the code. This way you can have e.g. "send_key(XT_KEY_SHIFT); send_key(XT_KEY_8);" 3. I would advice to check for the release/break key code "0xf0" at the start of the function and set a flag/variable to mark it. Most of the key handling are identical, with just the break flag difference. e.g. "send_key(ascan | break_flag);" Of course, special key handling "if (c==0xe0)" should be first, as it expects the release/break "0xF0" code after it. aka "0xE0,0xF0,71" for "Delete". (Still the special key handling routine is also doing key checks twice for pressed and released keys). 4. OCR and upload the TANDY documentation and put the link to the relevant part in the project. It won't hurt if you put a link to a PS2 documentation. (The one on avrfreaks site was very useful to me. Tell me if you want direct link.) 5. Do not make your own functions that start with _ or __. They are generally reserved for internal library functions. Might get funny if you overload them. 6. Some people already proposed to make a constant table of size 256 and fill it byte by byte. On some architecture constant tables are directly accessed from flash, so it may free up some of the RAM memory. No idea if that applies to the one you use.

You are the man! Excellent work.

Adrian, thank you for this. Brings back memories. The SX was the first machine we had in the house in 1984 and it started my journey for everything since, at the age of 6. I still laugh hard remembering the 640k base mem, 4.7mhz and the 20 meg hard drive that you literally had to “park” on a huge ISA card. I remember playing every Sierra game at the time back then along with Janitor Joe, Bouncing Babies and Round 42. I could go on forever. I wish I could have stayed that young and not have any responsibilities like today :/

Great timing on this video! I'm currently working on a PS2 keyboard interface for the Atari 2600. I was doing pretty much the same thing you were doing, and I was writing a program on the Atari side to accept codes through the joystick port from the Arduino and display what you typed on the screen. Now I don't need to go through a lot of the mess that you have figured out!

I don't know why but I often solder GND to RX0 when working with Arduino. Great video as ever. Happy SepTandy!

Glad you used an Arduino. Have loads of them & pretty familiar with projects involving them.

The only Tandy PC I owned was a 1000 HX which was my first PC and for the life of me I don't even recall how I acquired it. I never took much interest in it and just gave it away. I think the thing about Tandy and their PC's were the proprietary components which was not unusual back in the day. Other PC's used off the shelf components and I believe that's what interested me more back then. While I don't have an interest in Tandy stuff all that much I never knew the external keyboards were proprietary and that's a shame but good to know. Your solution to resolving that issue is also a good one should someone want to relive their Tandy experience. I can count on one hand the number of people I knew who used Tandy Computers. Back in 1980 I did buy one of their Pocket PC's just to write some code on but it was limited to like 1.9K of available RAM but I had more fun with that puppy then I did with the 1000 HX but that's because it was a novelty. For a while I had my eye on the Model 1 but then I discovered Commodore Computers.

Fortunately, my 1000A came with its native keyboard, all handed down to me by a family friend back in 1994. Also gave me software, computer's manuals, amber composite monitor & Epson printer (with proprietary ribbon cable). I have 2 CGA monitors I use with it though. But this adapter will come in handy if anything happens to the keyboard.

Oh yeah! I was waiting for something like this for a long time! I´ve already saw the other project with the ATTINY but it was way more complicated. This was super easy and worked like a charm! Thanks Adrian!

Good for you! I remember this idea was floating around the VCF forum for years, but I don't think it went anywhere. This will certainly make other people's lives easier.

Adrian you are the 80's computer wizard... The Tandy computer was my desire object for years, but it was so expensive to me.

When your keyboard controller is more powerful than your main CPU...

One note for people wanting to build something similar - If you use an Arduino Pro Mini, keep in mind there are two versions. One has 5V logic like a normal Arduino and the other has 3.3V. Most other Arduino boards use 5V. I am not sure 3.3V logic would work for the keyboard signals. Also, even though you can power the 3.3V Pro Mini with 5V on the RAW pin, the VCC and the other pins will be at 3.3V including the programming pins.

was about to say "just use a bare Atmega328p" but honestly the Arduino boards are barely any more expensive and come with a complete board and simple programming interface. overall pretty useful little project.

you could probably fit that arduino inside the keyboard and run just a cable out of it for that ultra clean look. very cool build/hack!

Excellent Adrian. I paid a hefty sum for one of my Tandy 1000 keyboards.

This is an awesome video for the Tandy. Is great to see the Tandy's get some love on RU-vid.

I wonder how hard it would be to make a new nameplate for that Tandy 1000. That's a pretty rare bird, and it would be neat to have it complete. Great vid, btw! The first IBM PC compatible that I ever used was my father's Tandy 1000SX. Ahh, memories!

Holy cow, Adrian...this is awesome. Level up! BTW...professional dev here...your code looks fine, don't be so self-conscious. To paraphrase the US Marines..."if it's ugly and it works...it isn't ugly."

That 8-Bit Guy cameo was great!

That's an awesome project. I will definately have to attempt to make one for my 1000A. While I do have its origional keyboard it has issues like phantom key presses, among other things. So it will be nice to have a properly functioning keyboard for my tandy. Thank you adrian for putting this together.

That's the right keyboard for the TX. The 'hold' key was great for pausing games.

Good work Adrian. Thanks for sharing the code.

you should check out marine-grade heatshrink tubing. it has glue inside that melts as it shrinks, creates a solid/waterproof/resistant connection.

now just use a USB keyboard.. USB -> PS/2 -> AT -> tandy 100 what a chain of adapters that would be.

Good job on making new hardware/interfaces for this old stuff. I like it, thumbs up!!👍🏻

I didn 't watch all of your video, but I think that I contribute to it with two pieces of advice: 1) Maybe it would be better for some users to just shove the arduino PCB inside the keyboard itself and avoid any mess with the long cables, bulky adapters and bad contacts. 2) If you are planning to use the PS/2 plug, you can always use some thin, short pieces of heat-shrinkable tubes, make fast solderings on its pins, wait after every soldering and use a 25W or lower soldering iron. Or you are gonna and up with a screwed-up PS/2 plug! I hope I was straight-forward and helping! If you don' t understand me clearly, it' s because I' m Greek... ;-)

Hi , pretty nifty, use a mini pc to fix a keyboard For strain relief back in the day when we home made serial cross over cables ( 9 to 25 pin or double ended both sides -4 connectors ) we use to use cheap / free floppy drive flat ribbon - for strain relief we just used 3 zip ties The large one was laid flat, then at each end we use a smaller cable tie that went around the cable diameter and the flat tie ensuring that after the "wrap was some loose inner cable cable where the soldered joins were " Hmm hard to explain, ok, lets assure the large flat zip tie is 6 inches, crimp one end, then ensure the inner cable is 8 inches long , then cable tie the other end, this gives 1 inch each side as slack. The other way with 4 wires was to use a 12 volt in line glass style car fuse assembly ( they are about the size of your finger ) open it up , pass one side of the cable into the fuse holder, then use a zip tie to stop the cable moving internally, some slack , then repeat on the other end We also used to grab a permanent market and draw a line on pin 1 red or black on earth to make sure we got it right Regards George

The Amstrad 1512/1640 has a similar issue. The keyboard interface is non-standard on that machine too. I believe it was a common point of differentiation for early PC clone makers. As long as software targetted the BIOS for keyboard input, it wouldn't be an issue for compatability, but it also meant that there was at least something on the machine that deviated from the original PC design heavily. Like the Tandy, the technical reference guide fully describes the timing for the machine specific keyboard interface.

I was literally writing a comment wondering if I could port this to an attiny, but I see that Scott Baker is already doing something like that. All the retro big heads are in for Septandy.

1000AX was my first computer when I was a kid.

Adrian: Another piece of great work! Very nice and useful! Unbelievable to see whats possible with the right knowledge and motivation. Looking forward to your next Video!

This is really cool. It might be worth building a dedicated keyboard by incorporating the Arduino board into the keyboard's shell, then running a DIN cable out of it straight into the Tandy.

Adrian...great video! Helpful hints that may have been pointed out... since you are using and ftdi, no need for a bootloader at all. That's really only for serial so it can pull the program up through the serial lines at boot time. Just select the next option down on the arduino menu to upload...I can't remember what it's called.

Nice job, Adrian! You could actually install the adapter inside the keyboard to create a dedicated Tandy keyboard, using the proper DIN plug on the cable end and everything. I'm sure someone likely come up with a circuit board layout to hold the Arduino and PS/2 jack, and a header for a Tandy-style keyboard cable. PCBway might be a good candidate for making the board itself. Add a 3-D printed case and it'll look factory fresh! If you ever make one of these adapters for older Apple machines, you can call it an "ADB ADB Adapter": Adrian's Digital Basement Apple Desktop Bus Adapter!

Awesome Tandy project! Looking forward to your next video.

Looking at your code you did a good job. Gona use it for my Tandy 1000TL I brought to the UK from the US. Getting it back was "Intresting"

If you're not experienced in soldering it can be worth spending a few dollars more to get the fancier DIN connectors with the metal casings. I found those much easier to work with when I was building an adapter for my Apple II recently

Love your channel Adrian, it's so nice just hanging out with you in the basement :) Thank you!

You’re spoiling us Adrian with another video within 24 hours! 👍

Great video, even greater content! I wonder if this could be expanded to some other computers (maybe the Atari 8-bit line, too)!

Back when I had my Tandy 1000A, I eventually found a pre-made adapter to do this same thing (in-line adapter for DIN AT keyboards). Don't remember where I had found it, might have been at a Computer Fair (remember those? You could actually buy all the pieces you needed to build a computer all in one day, bring them home and build your system right away). The F11 and F12 keys on those early Tandy 1000-series machines had different scan-codes as an AT F11-F12 (as I understand). The original Deskmate (maybe Deskmate II?) required the Tandy 1K keyboard for certain functions, and some games ported to the machines made use of them.

Adapting a PS/2 keyboard to a Tandy 1000? Automatic like, 30 seconds in!

Fantastic work, Adrian! I was thinking of Young Sheldon and all the story lines about Radio Shack of the 1990s. I remember looking at the Tandy machines back then, but didn't bite (or is it byte!) because my focus incorrectly or not, was on software compatibility, and every article I read plus the warnings of Radio Shack themselves led me to believe that the 1000 and its successors would not be compatible with most of the existing software at the time and that you were stuck buying software at Radio Shack as well as the hardware. Later, that proved not to be the case as much because third party software vendors started producing programs for the tandy, but I think it hurt sales of the machines, as other brands of machines, notably from Compaq, were not IBM but yet they were compatible with much of the third-party software being written at the time . Later, I became aware of the complete office suite that Radio Shack had available for the Tandy machines, and learned that it was one of the best all-around packages available at the time until Microsoft office came along. So, live and learn I guess!

good on you for being humble, good content keep it up

actually most usb keyboards come or came with a passive converter to ps/2 minidin (which is the same as AT with a different plug). keyboard firmware doesn't change all that much so there is a pretty good chance you can simply cut the plug of any usb keyboard and solder a din or minidin to it and it'll just work. which retroactively even goes for XT standards. most (around half of them out there) of the oem/3rd party AT/PS2 keyboard firmwares also autodetected the XT protocol back in the days and that code may still even be there.

I love that you made this. But I think someone should build this card. There are companies that build PCBs pretty cheap...

That keyboard definitely works on my Tandy 1000TX FYI

My Northgate Omni Ultra manual indicates it does support the Tandy 1000SX and 1000TX via one of their dipswitch settings. My old Northgate won't disappoint ;) BTW, really nice solution Adrian, as the Northgate does bust your cost consideration.

Amazing work! Bravo!

“you have to use your mind“ is the best Quote of this video. 😅👍

Excellent work!

I'll have to remember to look in to this possibility for my 6000HD that I don't have a keyboard for... Apparently one for a 12 or 16B will also work on it, but, yeah, not terribly easy to find. If I ever get to a point that I can re-cap the power supply in the thing. Worked great first time I powered it up after I got it a few years back, it loaded up to a Xenix prompt I could do nothing with, no problem. Second time I hooked it up earlier this year just because I had nothing better to do, after a bit of wiggling the pile of cards around and powering it on/off a few times the errors went away and it came up once again, and then a minute later that oh so fun hissing and popping with that distinct frying capacitor smell happened and the power cord got yanked out super quick.

THIS IS THE VIDEO I NEED RIGHT NOW. :D

Needed this so bad.

Great video, Adrian! That documentation Tandy whipped up is fantastic. I'm kind of curious to see if a wireless USB adapter for a wireless keyboard would work fine via a USB to PS/2 adapter on the input side of the Arduino

Excellent project Adrian. With some code modification, it could be adapted to almost any other computer !!!!

Thinking about doing this to hook up my X-Arcade tankstick to my Tandy since it uses PS/2

Hi Adrian, great video. You need to identify the Arduinos, Nano and Pro Mini. Pro Mini needs a FTDI adapter to program it.

I always try and pick up them old ps/2 hp keyboards, nice to type on.

Great video! I hope the process is also valid for an Amstrad PC keyboard. I have to try this some day.

Try running your code through a program called astyle. It's a nice way to properly format C and C-like code. It has a lot of presets, but I tend to use "astyle -A14" which is "Google" style according to the astyle manual, but it's the look I prefer. You can either use a preset number or you can individually set each particular setting -- where braces go, where spaces go, etc.

I've been wondering about connecting an Arduino to a TRS-80 model 1, to the address and data bus so I can emulate peripherals, this adapter of yours has me back thinking about that project.

Nice work! I think that HP PS/2 keyboard is required inventory for any Portland area Goodwill as well (I have one as well - with the extra multimedia keys).

Thank you Adrian. I can't believe there wasn't a solution for this already. Long time coming. Also, there is a keyboard called the Northgate Omnikey that supports the Tandy 1000 scan codes, but its not fully compatible and almost (but not quite) as rare as the original, and it still needs an adapter. It took me months to find an original Tandy 1000 keyboard in non-working and damaged condition. I did get it working though.

Planet X3 at the end FTW!

Code looks ok, it works that is the main thing. You can maybe trim it a bit by defining the translation table more like this, I often use sets of 8 or 16 per line for tables.... unsigned char translate[256] = { 0x0B, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06, 0x07, 0x08, 0x09, 0x0A ..... etc }; If you don't want to re-key it then just use a for loop to dump the table you currently have to the serial at runtime :-)

I remember seeing in one of the RadioShack catalogs in the late 80s an adapter that would allow you to use a normal XT keyboard on a Tandy 1000. IIRC it was around $100 or so.

Obviously, now you already did all the work, but for programming I'd wire two inputs to the arduino and have a sort of testing program which reads input from 1st keyboard, then input from 2nd keybaord, and creates a map that is written out to console for the final program, as that would make the code usable for not just the Tandy 1000. Heck, I might try that out :)

I didn't even realize optiboot loaded faster. I just used it to squeeze an extra feature or two into my 3D printer.

That hot swap action tho!! On my Commodore PC's (AT connector) the computer freeze whenever you unplug the keyboard by mistake :S

now this is wat i need for my XT, but working on atmega32u4

I don't hit the bell... The best thing, when I come to RU-vid, I'm surprised at all the new content, and that's a good thing.

It works with the 1000 TX as well. That's the model I have, and the keyboard is identical.

Make the extra keys a macro :left winkey=dir[enter], right winkey=type, appskey=.... etc etc

Nice job on the programing, even though it does look a nightmare. I could'nt have done it. Big thumbs up!

your mandatory subscription to ADB is now active.

Now I have to build a Tandy 1000.

It's a pretty and slim adapter. good work adrian!

What an amazing video

Wow that is really useful, the Tandy keyboard are really rare by themselves. Next lets build a joystick adapter for the DB15 to Tandy DIN ;)

Utter kewlness.

FYI Tandy sold a Universal Keyboard Adapter for the 1000/1000SX. Cat. No. 25-1030