Hi all. I recently acquired a pair of keyboards for the ABI Boardmaster 4000. I'd been looking for ages so am pretty pleased :) Anyway, given how long it took me to track one down I figured they must be pretty rare so I thought it was worth documenting what I've found in case anybody else is looking to program their ABI. For a start the connector is a DIN type 3 pin so I figure power and clocked data. I have yet to verify this on a scope. Inside is the part number "Cherry 601-1118" in solder and Model number: 680-0486H/05 on a Cherry label. Googling these part numbers shows hits for this keyboard being used in CNC machines so there may be quite a few out there. The main IC is an Intel MAB 8048H (Datasheet here: http://pdf.chinaicmart.com/MAB/MAB8035HL.pdf) which is a basic MCU with 1kB of onboard mask ROM. I figure the Cherry ID and mask rom is a good sign that these are generic serial keyboards so it may be possible to interface some similar models to the ABI. I considered whether the mask ROM might contain custom code but the chip markings appear to be as-standard so I'm hoping it's just plain keyboard matrix decoding & serial RX/TX code. I've (very briefly) thought about dumping the mask ROM, probably by attaching some RAM and writing a trojan to dump it. I'm happy to give this a try if there is any interest. Other than the MCU there are a trio of LS08s, a 159, a 5.185 MHz crystal and a few resistors and caps. The PCB is a single-sided design and very simple so it wouldn't be too hard to produce a schematic if anybody needs to reproduce it. So, are there a large number of ABI users out there who are desperate for a keyboard? If not then I'll probably only document this for historical purposes and not bother dumping the MCU ROM. I'm also looking for any leads on the Masterlink software that ABI used to provide a kind of HP-IB control interface. Any info on the software, docs or the supposed replacement PAL which is meant to come with the kit would be very much appreciated. thanks, tim _______________________________________________ Techtoolslist mailing list Techtoolslist@flippers.com http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/techtoolslist FTP site is: ftp://ftp.flippers.com/TTL/TestEquipment Archive site: http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/techtoolslist/