So RC is upon us and I have decided to replace the failed keyboard on my newly acquired Interak-1 with a modern USB item.

The Interak keyboard uses a 7 bit parallel interface to present an ASCII character to machine itself with a strobe line to say that the data is ready. It’s a bit much to ask the Interak to cope with USB directly and it’s a bit much for me to learn enough about USB to be able to program a Z80 to cope in the time allowed and I don’t want to.

Enter HobbyTronics who produce a small USB host board that just needs 5v and a USB keyboard and will produce a serial output.

The serial output can’t go straight in to the Interak either but serial to parallel isn’t too bad.

Enter Arduino.

So, here we have an Arduino UNO with a prototype shield and a tiny USB keyboard. At the moment it’s just reading the serial input from the keyboard adapter and squirting it down the serial port to the PC but it’s a start. Next is to set up some pins for the parallel interface.

Keep watching (if you want).