You have the very old Commodore 64 keyboard and you don’t know what to do about it? Instead of throw it away; it’s time for you to give this old clacky Commodore 64 keyboard a little bit “modification”…

Do you know that you can convert the Commodore 64 keyboard to the modern USB keyboard? Well, you don’t have to cast any magic on it. However, it does require some modification.

The Commodore 64 keyboard is based on Objective Development’s AVR-USB firmware, where only the USB stack for Atmel AVR microcontrollers and the simple HID keys. To be honest, you can use this modified Commodore 64 keyboard to control any stage show if you want!

You can connect the Commodore 64 keyboard to a PC and it’s to be detected as a USB HID device. The Atmel ATMega8 that being used in the AVR-USB firmware is take charge, by scanning the keyboard matrix of an old Commodore 64 keyboard. After that, it starts to convert keypressed to USB HID reports.

With some modification, the Commodore 64 keyboard is becoming easily modifiable for creating a USB keyboard in a different form factors.

Oh, by the way, remember to have fun during this project!