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@neffo you know, I did consider that, but this is enough work (and doesn't risk punching a hole in the machine)
@bbcmicrobot @neffo is it possible to simulate typing with a separate input device or is the keyboard specially hooked up in a way that disallows that? not asking you to do more work though <3 just curious
@hipsterelectron @neffo hah sorry didn’t mean sound negative, I like robots. Anyhow, the BBC has an internal connector for the keyboard. I connected an Arduino which can simulate key presses… the Arduino is in turn connected to a Pi which was using the Twitter API to fetch tweets and then send the key presses to the Arduino. Long story short, you can use any input method that can be interfaced to the Pi. Pretty sure I can do this all with a Pico W now.
@bbcmicrobot@mastodon.me.uk@hipsterelectron @neffo Here’s the gist for connecting the arduino to the Beeb keyboard I/f https://gist.github.com/8bitkick/b52d1933dd8a8965960e3ede01781f3d#file-beeb-keyboard-ino
I used a logic analyzer to find the signal timing. After the fact, I found the code responsible in the BBC Micro OS ROM… cycle count checks out https://tobylobster.github.io/mos/mos/S-s17.html#SP34
@bbcmicrobot @neffo that is remarkably readable
@bbcmicrobot You might need to play around with it for some programs; I think Elite drove the keyboard itself and had a habit of scanning a nonexistent column.