I Tried Gaming on a Soviet Hall-Effect Keyboard

Summary

This video explores the Consul 262.4, a Hall effect keyboard from 1989 Czechoslovakia, used at Chernobyl. The team at Linus Tech Tips revives it with a Raspberry Pi Pico, discovering issues with its unique DA15 connector and ROM chips. They fix the keyboard for gaming, highlighting its consistent actuation force and travel distance, despite ergonomic challenges. The video also features赞助商Nexigo's Hello Cam Pro and a humorous look at old tech with a modern twist.

Takeaways

• 🗝️ The Consul 262.4 is a Hall effect keyboard from 1989, made in Czechoslovakia and used at Chernobyl.
• 🎮 It's possible to game on this keyboard despite its age, but the experience is a mix of the best and worst.
• 🔌 The keyboard uses a DA15 connector for serial communication, requiring only six pins to function.
• 💻 A Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller was used to interface the keyboard with modern systems.
• 🔍 Some keys produced the same output, indicating a potential issue with the keyboard's electronics.
• 📊 Rohde Schwarz equipment was used to analyze the keyboard's output in ASCII and binary modes.
• 🛠️ A broken ROM chip was identified as the cause of the keyboard's inconsistent behavior.
• 🔄 The keyboard has a unique design with nine-bit parallel signals and a strobe signal for key presses.
• 🎮 The keyboard's lack of key repeat functionality affects gaming, requiring the use of a 'repeat' key to register multiple presses.
• 🔧 Repairing the keyboard involved bypassing the faulty ROM chips with a microcontroller programmed to handle key signals.
• 👾 Despite its unergonomic design, the keyboard proved to be very consistent in actuation force and travel distance.

Q & A

What is the Consul 262.4 keyboard?

The Consul 262.4 is a Hall effect keyboard made in 1989 in the CSSR, using components from Tesla, and was deployed in places like the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

What is unique about the keyboard's design?

The keyboard has a unique design where it uses a DA15 connector for simple asynchronous serial communications and requires a clock pulse, which is unusual for asynchronous serial communications.

What was the first problem encountered when trying to get the keyboard working?

The first problem encountered was the unusual connector, which used a DA15 connector for serial communications instead of the more common game port.

How many pins did they need to hook up from the DA15 connector?

They only needed to hook up six of the pins: ground, serial input and output, both five and negative 12 volt power, and finally a clock pulse.

What was the role of the Raspberry Pi Pico in this project?

The Raspberry Pi Pico was programmed to send the clock signal using timer interrupts and then read the serial data to output it over USB.

What was discovered when they tried to use the keyboard?

It was found that different keys produced the same output, indicating a problem with the keyboard's signal processing.

What tool did they use to analyze the keyboard's output?

They used a Rohde Schwarz oscilloscope with an ASCII mode to analyze the keyboard's output and see the corresponding ASCII characters.

What was the issue with the keyboard's data output?

The issue was that the first half of the data varied with different keys, but the second half did not, indicating a problem with the keyboard's ROM chips.

What was the purpose of the repeat key on the keyboard?

The repeat key was used to enable key repeat functionality, allowing multiple key presses to be registered when a key was held down.

How did they fix the keyboard to make it usable for gaming?

They wired in a microcontroller before the broken ROM chips, programmed it with their own lookup tables, and made the microcontroller act like a USB-HID device.

What was the final verdict on the keyboard's usability for gaming?

Despite its unergonomic design, the keyboard was made usable for gaming by adjusting the delay and using the repeat key, although it was still challenging to use compared to modern keyboards.

What was the most consistent aspect of the Consul 262.4 keyboard?

The most consistent aspect was the actuation force and travel distance, which were nearly identical from key to key, thanks to its 80s style solid steel backplane.