ADB Keyboard for NeXT

　This might be a bit of an oddball. Well, I have a lot of sentimental attachment to it, so I bought it and just couldn’t bring myself to part with it—I’ve just been keeping it ever since.NeXT I’ll leave it to you to look up the details on your own, but to give a brief explanation: it’s a high-end PC manufacturer founded by Steve Jobs after he was ousted from Apple. I believe it was around 1990. Back then, as a fledgling engineer, I was absolutely fascinated by it. I’ve even kept the catalogs from that era in good condition for nearly 30 years. The PCs came in two form factors: the “Cube” and the “Pizza Box.” The Cube was released first, and I was amazed by its unusual black cube shape and the fact that it ran Unix—a feature not yet available on the Macintosh at the time. Even now, whenever I check eBay, I find myself searching for Cube-style cases…

　Since buying the case itself would be too difficult, I bought a used keyboard instead. This is that keyboard. It’s technically a Japanese keyboard, but the layout is US—essentially, the kana characters have been placed directly onto a US layout. It arrived in brand-new condition. The interface to the PC is ADB. My first DIY project—as an old-timer—was an ADB converter for a Super Famicom controller. I implemented this using the bootstrap area of the MC68HC11 I was using for work at the time. Now, while I might be more familiar with ADB than the average Joe, these days everything uses USB. In other words, this time I’ll have to implement the interface described at ADB⇒USB…

　A while back, at a Cocoa study group, someone brought in a commercially available ADB⇒USB converter and lamented that it had been discontinued. But since old-timers like me never had the option to buy one in the first place, I’ll build my own using an MCU, just like I did back when SFC⇒ADB was around. Unlike back then, though, some Maker is already making one, so I’ll make use of it (or rather, copy it). Well, since I’m already earning a living at MCU, I was able to get it working on the first try and run it on my old DIY PC.

　My custom PC back then was an homage to the “Cube”—I built it into a cube shape using an aluminum frame. After carefully examining the power supply circuitry, I made it possible to turn the power on via the keyboard, just like the Macintosh and NeXT-PC models from that era. Incidentally, this cube PC was later dismantled, and the aluminum frame that formed the cube became the base material for the The Console mentioned earlier…