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Why the Apple II Didn't Support Lowercase Letters (2020)

(www.vintagecomputing.com)
136 points colinbartlett | 5 comments | 10 May 25 21:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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WalterBright ◴[10 May 25 22:48 UTC] No.43949649[source]▶
Back in 1978, I made my own keyboard for a single board 6800 computer I designed, also because I could not afford a keyboard.

I went to a surplus store and bought an EBCDIC keyboard for a couple bucks. I unsoldered all the keys from the circuit board. I took a plastic board, and using the old circuit board, drilled holes in it. Inserted the keys in the holes, and then wired it up in an 8x8 grid pattern. The two 8 bits gave 64 possible keys, which was enough, connecting those to an I/O port enabled recognizing which key was down.

It worked fine as long as you were careful not to press more than one key at a time.

I don't recall what I did with that computer. It's all gone, including the design notebook for it.

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1. ChuckMcM ◴[11 May 25 04:18 UTC] No.43951328[source]▶
Ah the memories eh? I had a Digital Group Z80 system with a keyboard that encoded the keypress as an 8 bit value that could be read by the computer It was 6 bits of key press and one bit for shift and one bit for control. I actually know where it is though, it's in a computer museum in Germany (long story).
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2. jbeninger ◴[11 May 25 12:32 UTC] No.43953354[source]▶
I read a tongue-in-check short story about an elf walking through a human museum.

"We think this urn was once used in agricultural ceremonies"

"Bitch, that's my coffee pot!"

Reading comments from older devs sometimes gives me the same vibes.

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3. betterThanTexas ◴[11 May 25 12:48 UTC] No.43953439[source]▶
Making coffee is an agricultural ceremony!
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4. cryptonector ◴[11 May 25 17:00 UTC] No.43955109{3}[source]▶
That keyboard? I used it to kick off my coffee machine every morning.
5. ChuckMcM ◴[11 May 25 18:08 UTC] No.43955676[source]▶
My wife was looking at the mini REI museum of camping gear and her back packing camping stove (a SVEA 123) which she still uses, was identical to one of the artifacts on display.