Reverse engineering the 1988 NeXT keyboard protocol
journal.spencerwnelson.com
Reverse engineering the 1988 NeXT keyboard protocol
1–10 of 67 posts
Re: Reverse engineering the 1988 NeXT keyboard protocol
#2Had one of these with my original NeXT Cube that I bought new while in grad school.
Still one of my favorite keyboards ever. And the Cube itself was so far ahead of everything else out there at the time that it felt like pure magic.
Re: Reverse engineering the 1988 NeXT keyboard protocol
#3Never did electronics, so when I've read of logic analyzers in a book, it sounded like something between an oscilloscope and a complex gadget out of a story from Isaac Asimov. It's surprising they're so simple, cheap and effective.
Re: Reverse engineering the 1988 NeXT keyboard protocol
#4I like to think that there's an alternate universe where the entire industry adopted NeXT's idea of replacing the dedicated Caps Lock key with a Command+Shift key combination, because it's such a smart and obviously correct thing to do.
Sadly, I'll never live in that universe.
Re: Reverse engineering the 1988 NeXT keyboard protocol
#5Never did electronics, so when I've read of logic analyzers in a book, it sounded like something between an oscilloscope and a complex gadget out of a story from Isaac Asimov. It's surprising they're so simple, cheap and effective.
Benchtop logic analyzers used to be more complicated. They are still technically superior with better probe termination, higher sample rates, and sophisticated hardware triggering.
Re: Reverse engineering the 1988 NeXT keyboard protocol
#6What a lovely tale! These are just the best. :)
Re: Reverse engineering the 1988 NeXT keyboard protocol
#7ADB? This means I can use an old Mac keyboard on NeXT, or vice-versa?
Re: Reverse engineering the 1988 NeXT keyboard protocol
#8ADB? This means I can use an old Mac keyboard on NeXT, or vice-versa?
On models with ROM v74 or above. On NeXT hardware, you can also go the other way.
Pretty good thread: http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=3428.0
Re: Reverse engineering the 1988 NeXT keyboard protocol
#9Never did electronics, so when I've read of logic analyzers in a book, it sounded like something between an oscilloscope and a complex gadget out of a story from Isaac Asimov. It's surprising they're so simple, cheap and effective.
Benchtop logic analyzers used to be more complicated. They are still technically superior with better probe termination, higher sample rates, and sophisticated hardware triggering.
The big down side is of course the limited sample memory. Many (especially the very popular, because cheap, fx2la) pc-based ones simply stream the data, which enables the use of all PC RAM and essentially infinite capture times.
Re: Reverse engineering the 1988 NeXT keyboard protocol
#10ADB? This means I can use an old Mac keyboard on NeXT, or vice-versa?
He says it is DIN of the "non-ADB" flavor, so probably not.