Keyboard Layout

A.C. Wright 6502
ACE · 67 keys

The board's own keys

67 Cherry MX switches, soldered to the board. There is nothing to plug in and nothing to set up — the keyboard is the computer. The small white reset button sits just above Esc, in the top-right corner.

Keys that do something out of the ordinary

Key	What it does
Esc	Stops a running program. BASIC checks between statements, so it works even inside a tight loop. At the `OK` prompt it does nothing
Esc at boot	Pressed during the five-second splash, takes you into the Monitor instead of BASIC
Ctrl + C	The same break, for people who type it out of habit
Ctrl + A…Z	Sends codes 1 to 26. `Ctrl`+`[` sends the same code as `Esc`
Backspace	Rubs out the last character you typed
Arrow keys	Send codes `$1C` to `$1F`. Nothing in BASIC listens for them — they are there for programs you write
Reset	Warm start. The machine comes back to `OK` with your program and variables intact. The cold start is the power switch

Keys that do nothing

Caps Lock, Menu, Alt and Fn are dead. The controller reads them and drops them — they send no character and hold no state.

Caps Lock has nothing to lock. Letters come out as capitals whatever you do; Shift changes the symbols and the number row only. Lower case exists over the serial line and nowhere else, which is worth knowing before you go hunting for a setting that turns it on.

Two other ways to type

PS/2. Plug a keyboard into the mini-DIN socket and it works alongside the board's keys, not instead of them. Both land in the same buffer.

Serial. A terminal at 19200 8-N-1 gives you a third keyboard — and the only one that can send lower case, or paste a listing in.

An outboard matrix. Anyone enclosing the board leaves the switches unfitted and wires their own 8 × 8 grid to the KEYBOARD header. Same grid, same codes — see the Keyboard Matrix card.