USB Keyboard Shield for VT100

About this project

The USB Keyboard Shield for VT100 project was developed to connect a standard USB keyboard to Digital's VT100 terminal. The current shield is rev 2.1 and working as intended.

Features

• All keys on VT100 keyboard are mapped to USB keyboard keys.
• The LED's and bell on VT100 keyboard are implemented on the shield.

In the demo video shown above, I demonstrated the following:

1. Turn on the VT100. Power-on self test is executed. When the self test is done, only the Online LED is lit. 
2. Press F1 (mapped to Setup) twice, turning on and off the Setup screen.
3. Logged in to OS X (connected via a USB-Serial interface), invoke vi.
4. Type something and then quit vi.
5. Type cat 1.led_all_on.txt. This file contains the escape sequences that turn on L1-L4 LEDs.
6. Press Ctrl-G twice, ringing the bell.
7. Type cat 0.led_all_off.txt. This file contains the escape sequences that turn off L1-L4.

How to get it working

I put the Readme, Gerber file, BOM, schematic and Arduino sketch for the shield on GitHub.

You will need to obtain the shield PCB, assemble/solder the parts and connect the shield to other components. Please note that this shield requires two more boards: an Arduino Uno and a USB Host Shield. For details, please see Readme on GitHub.