EzHID Amiga Keyboard Firmware

Introduction

The amikbd module is a firmware package for the EZ-USB device that interfaces between the serial communication protocol of an Amiga A2000/A3000 keyboard and the USB HID driver of any operating system. Supporting the USB boot protocol for keyboards, it can be attached as the primary keyboard to modern computers.

Compilation

Change to the amikbd/src directory and type

make

You will need a recent version of SDCC, so it is a good idea to check-out the latest code from the CVS repository or donwload a snapshot.
The hex-file can be downloaded directly to the EZ-USB device using your preferred method. The firmware supports both downloading into the device RAM or being bootloaded from a programmed serial I2C EEPROM on the board. In the latter case, you'll have to add the option -DROM_FIRMWARE in Makefile. After having compiled the source code to suit the needs of the bootloading, run create_ezhid_e2.pl on the compiled hex-file. The output of create_ezhid_e2.pl has the correct format for the onbaord I2C EEPROM.
The benefit of having the firmware permanently in the EEPROM is that most modern motherboards detect the USB keyboard boot protocol and include the keyboard at system boot time. Moreover, you do not have to set up a firmware downloader for every operating system you happen to use on your computer.

Adapter Hardware

There is not much hardware required to attach the Amiga keyboard to the EZ-USB board. You will need an appropriate connector and an external 5V power source.

Wiring Diagram for the Amiga Keyboard (amikbd.png)

Keyboard KCLK (1) is connected to PC4 and keyboard KDAT (2) to PC5. This assignment is arbitrary as the serial transfer code bit-bangs over any general-purpose IO-ports. If the default pins don't suit your needs, you can alter the macros in amikbd.h accordingly.

Additional Resources

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