> I saw a bloke at the last Gloucester Show who had his Sam in a mini > tower, he had got around the problem of a separate keyboard by wiring up > his own set of individual keyswitches and slapping that on the end of a > big ribbon cable. >
This was pretty much how the separated keyboard on the Commodore 128D worked... Since there are 9 columns of 8 rows, that's be a 17 way ribbon cable (i.e. 1.7" wide). I was thinking of desoldering the two keyboard connectors from the pcb and putting a 25way D socket in - using the 12 pin row to replace the 8-way connector, and the 13 pin row for the 9-way connector. Then transferring all the gubbins from the SAM into the tower case, and leaving the keyboard in the sam case. Then making a 1m lead or so with the ribbon cable, with a 25way D plug at one and and the two keyboard connectors at the other, and using the whole sam case as the separate keyboard. Admittedly a pretty big keyboars, but it seems fairly workable. The only thing is: we've now got to hunt around for those disc drive blanking plates to fill the holes! Andy
