Subj : Re: Commodore Pet keyboard repair To : James Harris From : Steve Douglas Date : Wed Jan 31 2018 21:39:17 "James Harris" wrote in message news:p3guas$7vd$1@dont-email.me... > On 12/01/2018 22:56, James Harris wrote: >> On 11/01/2018 16:04, Jim_64 wrote: > > ... > >>> But, please try the alcohol cleaning again first. It really should >>> work. You could also move some contact around to see if the issues >>> follow the contacts or there is some issue with the PCB/cabling. >> >> Again, that's good advice. I have cleaned them a few times with the >> isopropyl alcohol and some more keys are working. There is no great >> staining coming off on to the cotton buds but I guess there could be >> enough which has built up over time. >> >> They are not all working yet but I'll keep at it - at least until the >> new pads arrive. > > Success! I have a working Pet. Lots and lots of rubbing the black pads > with a cotton bud dipped in isopropyl alcohol did it. > > This must be the first time I have used a Pet in decades and it's a really > strange nostalgic experience. For example: > > I'd forgotten how one has to make space to insert characters but I > remember how cursor movement characters show up if too many spaces are > inserted - similar to the effect of typing an odd number of double quotes > on a line. > > It was really weird that keyboard shortcuts like typing L shift I as a > shortcut for LIST came back to me immediately as if it was more a muscle > memory that a mental one. > > I remembered Pets being ready as soon as the phosphor glowed but I'd > forgotten how slow they are in Basic; characters appear on the screen as > if they were coming over a modem! When I was of school age a friend and I > wrote some machine code and were blown away with how fast it was compared > with the Basic programming we were used to. Speaking of which, I remember, > with regret, the absence of a repeat key and writing a machine code > routine to try to provide autorepeat - unsuccessfully, IIRC. > > I took a look at the character set and I'd forgotten that some Pets - like > this one - had no lower case. IIRC later Pets did but I'm not sure what > they did with the graphics characters which they presumably displaced to > make the lower case chars available. > > Anyway, just a few reminiscences. This has transported me back to many, > many years ago! > > > -- > James Harris > All Pets have lower case. You have a choice between upper-case/graphics or upper-case/lower-case (graphics retained on the non-alpha keys). I can't remember what the pokes were to change the character set. With the earlier Pets you would have to use the shift key to get lower-case. Steve --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3) .