Re: [NTLK] Newton keyboard options

At 07:16 PM 7/26/2008, you wrote:

>Do we have a solution to connect a ps2 or USB keyboard with a Newton 2100? I
>looked at Adriano's site but everything USB there was aimed toward sync
>operations.

There is a basic problem with connecting a USB keyboard to a Newton.
The solution that Adriano has come up with, and the one that I was
working on, have the Newton as a USB slave, a keyboard is also a USB
slave. A slave cannot talk to a slave.

With USB, the brains of the system are in the master. The slave is
pretty dumb. A lot of yucky protocol stuff has to be done by the
master like providing power (5V at 1/2Amp), negotiating power and
dealing with hubs, enumerating the bus that can have 127 devices on
it, dealing with devices being inserted and removed, and all that
data transfer stuff. Unfortunately it's enough that it gets done by
something of a PC class.

There are, quite recently, chips that can handle being a master or a
slave called USB on the go (OTG). BUT it is not a universal
connection, it can be a keyboard connection but not a disk drive
connection, or a disk drive but not a printer. The chips don't have
enough code space to do it all on the fly.

Now, Adriano's connector can't do OTG. It is a USB slave device that
has to speak to a master. In this case it looks like a serial port to the PC.

If you are interested in hooking up a USB keyboard, you could embed
an FTDI Vinculum chip in the modem slot and attach it to the
expansion port, and Bob's your Uncle. Shouldn't cost more than a
couple of thou and 6 months of board layout and hacking.

A

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Received on Sun Jul 27 01:34:09 2008