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

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.

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).

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.