Emulate a Commodore 64 keyboard with a modern PC and an Arduino
Arduino Team — January 18th, 2017
Using an Arduino, Adam Podstawczynski is able to translate keystrokes on his notebook to character inputs on a C64.
If you enjoy using a Commodore 64, but either don’t like (or perhaps don’t have) its keyboard, Podstawczynski’s project could be a great solution. His build runs a Python script on a PC, Mac, or Linux computer, which maps Commodore keys to a series of binary digits. It then sends this data over USB to an Arduino Mega, which in turn uses an MT8088 crosspoint switch to interface with the mainboard of a C64, allowing for hardware keyboard emulation.
This setup can act as a simple keyboard interface from the computer, or could be employed as a macro generator for demonstration purposes. It could even enable you to input an entire BASIC program on your PC, then send it to the C64 as desired!
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