Yep.  I remember drawing up a grid and marking the characters in, and sto=
pped=20
when I got about 12 or so characters (all I needed at the time) from 7 or=
 8=20
lines.

I later damaged it (broke off one of the edge-connector PCB traces on whi=
ch I=20
had soldered a solid wire) and it was easy to use the next edge-connector=
=20
pad, and changed the key chars in the code.  But that's when I tried to f=
ind=20
a pattern, but could not.  Don't have it in front of me, but IIRC, there =
was=20
a basic pattern developing with the digits and F-keys.

FWIW, here are a couple photos of the prototype "head" unit.  It was size=
d so=20
the final version (on a proper PCB) would directly replace the head unit =
in=20
my car.  You can see the keyboard controller on the back (with the 3 led'=
s). =20
I used parallel for the display control, and the keyboard interface for t=
he=20
input/buttons, both of which were funnelled thru an RJ45 connector (since=
=20
RJ45 cables are low-cost and easy to route over long lengths).  I used an=
=20
RJ45-to-DB25 adapter (re-wired my own way) on the PC end.  The red displa=
y is=20
a 2x20 reverse red crystalfontz unit to match the rest of the dash=20
instruments.  Haven't completed it yet, but the prototype served me very =
well=20
for many thousands of cross-country miles.

=09http://narwani.org/neil/stuff/mp3-controller-front.jpg
=09http://narwani.org/neil/stuff/mp3-controller-back.jpg

Cheers,
-Neil.



On Friday 29 August 2003 14:47, Josh Koffman scribbled:
> I've done something similar for another purpose. Did you find that the
> wiring of the keys didn't really follow any pattern? I would have
> expected it to be a semi-nice grid, but it sure wasn't even close. The
> only thing I could think of (which I never got around to checking) was
> that it had something to do with the scan codes the controller
> generated.
>
> Josh

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