Re: Apple II+ keyboard weirdness (help with repair)

[Roger Johnstone <rojaws@es.co.nz>]

In <Fdbqa.51328$MZ6.22928@fe05.atl2.webusenet.com> Rob Diehl wrote:

> Thanks for the help. Unfortunately the file seems to be corrupt (both 
> WinRAR and gzip refuse to extract it). Tried to get it with both IE 
> and wget. Do you have another copy, or else one that isn't in gzip 
> format? Also, your web server seems to be setting the MIME type to 
> Quicktime for some reason.

Weird. I even tested it after I uploaded the file, and it downloads fine 
with Safari. I just tried Internet Explorer, and the file got caught by 
the QuickTime plug-in. It looks like IE or the QT plug-in has a bug in 
it and is getting confused by the *.tiff.gz extension and thinks it's a 
TIFF. I tried renaming it to just *.gz and then IE downloads it fine. 
With the original filename extensions Safari and OmniWeb downloaded it 
fine, but Netscape 7.0 opened the GZip file and showed the TIFF!

> BTW, I should mention that the voltages I measured were while no keys 
> were being pressed, so I wouldn't think the pins would be toggling 
> states, but I'm also not sure how the keyboard on the Apple is 
> designed so maybe it does?
>
> Thanks again.
> 
> -Rob

The keyboard matrix decoder chip scans the keys all the time, not just 
when one is pressed. It may be that the data outputs are changing as 
well, to the code of each key as they are scanned, but the strobe is 
only activated when a key is actually pressed.

-- 
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand

Apple II - FutureCop:LAPD - iMac Game Wizard
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~rojaws/
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