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HDMI and USB Keyboard Support

So, the RC2014 is a great little computer.  We all know that.  However, to communicate with it, it is easiest to use the serial port and hook it up to a laptop or desktop PC.  This makes detracts from the fact that it is small, portable and cheap as well as missing the point of running code on such a basic computer.  So I’ve been looking for a solution to this.

Back when this was still running on a breadboard, I hooked up an Atmel ‘328 that was connected to a keyboard and 4 x 20 LCD display.  It communicated with the RC2014 over the serial port and kind of worked ok, although 4 lines was very restrictive and the Atmel couldn’t really keep the screen running and listening at the same time.   I have thought about using a ‘328 to drive a composite output, or maybe some kind of bigger LCD panel, but nothing really struck me as just right.

That is, until the kind people at Raspberry Pi released a cheap multifunction interface device a couple of weeks ago!

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Retro Challenge January 2016 – Preamble

So, you may well remember that I entered Retro Challenge 18 months ago, and what a fun crazy busy time that was!  Well, the January Retro Challenge competition is about to kick off in just over 2 weeks.

If you’re not familiar with Retro Challenge, shame on you!  But you can de-shame yourself by heading over to http://www.retrochallenge.org/ and seeing what it’s all about.  Essentially, it’s a month long bi-annual competition where the entrants set themselves a goal based around old school computing and blog, tweet and share their experiences.  The goals are pretty loose, as long as they are based on something from last centuary (modern emulators of old kit is fine).

The challenge I set myself was to take a breadboard based Z80 computer and bring it to life in modular PCB form in such a way that I could spell out my name on.  Have a look back through my blog to see how I did.  Spoiler —->

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