David, Look into www.futurlec.com 's offerings. They offer development boards "really cheap". You can't even get small qty PC boards made at these prices. For instance: http://www.futurlec.com/ATDevBoard.html is an AT90S2313 development board with full, on board, RS-232 drivers. There is an app-note on Atmel site about using an AVR processor as a PC-keyboard (though you want to read a keyboard, not be one, but some of the example might still apply). The higher end boards (AT90S8535 and ATMega boards) also include an synchronous serial port that may work with the PC keyboards, making software very simple. The AT90S2313 only has the RS-232 port, not the synchronous port. I prefer the Atmel series processors over the PIC's for a variety of reason which are probably OT. But they also have a line of PIC dev boards as well as 8051 dev boards. Pick your processor, don't worry about perf or PCB's! At these prices it's not worth doing it yourself! I have bought some of these boards from Futurlec, their biggest drawback is it takes a while to get things (a couple of weeks). From what I can tell, they're an Australian company that distributes Asian built products. -Zonn PS Let me know and I can send you some buffered IRQ driven RS-232 routines for the AT90S2313 (or any AVR processor). On Sun, 1 Jun 2003 10:59:56 -0700, "David Shoemaker" <davids@oz.net> wrote:

I am working on a small black box to be connected between a PC style keyboard and the 9100 keyboard port to convert the PC scan codes to the required serial.

What I want to know is how many people would like one and if you would be willing to pay (at a wild guess) $20 for it. I am betting there won't be enough demand to have PC boards made up for them so they will be perf board assembled.

David