Tuesday 31 May 2011

switches!

I've added some switches for turning the peripherals on and off. Mainly because I got fed up with having to unplug the whole thing every time something threw a wobbly, the memorystick got unmounted/ejected or if the USB port it was plugged into wasn't providing enough power.


Aren't they beautiful! (erm.. no)
from left to right: nothing* Program protect*, Storage, Keyboard
*this was going to be the FDTI but the TX, RX and DTR lines where enough to keep it powered :(
*isolates the DTR line

Wednesday 25 May 2011

code

I'm not entirely sure how to release the code for this, maybe on Google code under the GPLv3?
Anyway, the last useful version is linked here.

keyboard!!

Take one Dvorak using engineer, an unhelpful IT admin, a vintage keyboard and an arduino.
Mix well for 2 weeks and bake for three years at 9000°F


Okay, maybe I didn't bake it (I'm no good at cooking anyway..)


The initial plan was to read the scancodes from the keyboard and re-shuffle them so that I could use a Dvorak layout while the operating system was set to qwerty. This turned out to be pretty simple to do once I got my head round the PS/2 system. I never got round to allowing PC -> keyboard communication, mostly because I can't be bothered (who needs status LEDs anyway?)


Having Dvorak-ifyed it I decided to have some fun and add a random expletive button.