[vcf-midatlantic] Perq 1

[william degnan]

Here is a message from CCTECH about the Perq 1 keyboard and mouse.  For
whomever it is who attempts to repair the FKAMARCH Perq 1, save this info...
Bill

>
>> I rescued one for VCFederation museum two years ago.
> http://vintagecomputer.net/perq/
> I was just looking at it this weekend.  It needs a keyboard and mouse I
> believe.  I remember there was a guy in Texas who had a few, never heard
> the full story though.

> That's a PERQ 1 (or 1a, the difference is in the CPU board), The keyboard
and pointing
device for a PERQ2 series machine are very different.

> The PERQ1 uses a standard Summagraphics Bit Pad 1 as the 'mouse'. It has
to be the
GPIB version, and connects to the GPIB port on the PERQ. There was going to
be a
special mouse known as the 'Kriz tablet' but AFAIK it never existed.

> The keyboard is an 8 bit parallel interface with strobe. IIRC it's
essentially the ASCII
code on the bottom 7 bits and the top bit is the ctrl key. Also in the
keyboard are the
reset button (which IIRC just grounds a line on the connector) and the DDS
(diagnostic
display) which is a 3 digit decimal counter cleared by the reset button and
incremented
by a signal from the processor, The machine will run without a DDS, but
it's a lot harder
to figure out why it doesn't boot.

> Basically what I am saying is that while it is nice to have the right
parts, there are going
to be workarounds if you can't get them

> -tony (Duell)