Message-ID:	<000301c142a3$7a0c1840$7308e289@mpaul>
From:	"Matthias Paul" <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
To:	<fd-dev AT topica DOT com>, <freekeyb-l AT ito DOT ams DOT smc DOT univie DOT ac DOT at>,
	<opendos AT delorie DOT com>
Subject:	Scancodes sent by non-standard keyboards (like "Multimedia" or "Internet" keyboards)
Date:	Fri, 21 Sep 2001 13:46:32 +0200
Organization:	University of Technology, RWTH Aachen, Germany
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Reply-To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com

Hi everyone.

I am currently once again collecting info about various non-
standard keyboards to update the INT 09h and port info in RBIL
and to add special support in our DOS keyboard driver FreeKEYB
for them. I tried to get the info directly from the manufactures,
but it came out that in most cases their support departments
donīt have this kind of info available (in particular not for
keyboards no longer being in production), as most of the cheaper
keyboards today are produced in Far East and just get rebranded...

I wonder what we are heading, when the "vendors" (yes, I mean
vendors, not distributors) do not even have access to trivial
programming information as scancodes sent by their own products
any more. Furthermore, sometimes they donīt even have their
products inhouse so that they could run tests themselves... ;->

I donīt think this use-as-long-as-the-Windows-driver-works-
or-dump-mentality is anything anyone rational should accept,
but it appears as if most customers only care about the price,
so they get what they pay for...
Meanwhile you can get "kind-of-keyboards" for ca. 7 USD over here,
while a good keyboard is not (and IMO cannot be) available for
less than 50 USD (personally I can recommend the Cherry G8*0*
series).
However, there were also extremely low-quality keyboards like
the Microsoft Natural Keyboard (actually a Key Tronic OEM design)
available for up to 100 USD, where you only pay for the name and
the ergo layout, but not for the quality of the key mechanism
(in fact, similar to keyboards for 1/4..1/14 of its price, this
keyboard does not have any mechanical key elements in the
classical sense, not even a PCB board). 

Well, anyway, Axel and I would like to support *any* keyboard,
low-range or quality product, standard or non-standard, to the
best of its capabilities, and we already do and will provide
even more options to remap non-standard codes to standard codes,
swap keys, or logically rearrange parts of the keyboard to make
odd layouts more useable.

Hence, we would like to ask anyone who owns or has access to
keyboards differing from the standard PC, AT, MF2, or "Windows"
keyboard layouts to take a few spare minutes and run some easy
tests with the tiny KEYBSCAN/KEYBBIOS utilities I posted a
couple of weeks ago (you can also find them in the old K3PLUS
package on our web-page (see signature) or get them via e-mail
request from us).

In order to help us, all youīd need to do is start KEYBSCAN
(preferably under plain DOS), press the special keys and let
us know what codes or sequence of codes are emitted by the
keyboard and displayed by KEYBSCAN. (Optionally, we might
also be interested in the codes displayed by KEYBBIOS, while
MS KEYB is active, but in case you have a different setup,
this is not actually necessary, because once we would know the
scancodes, we can use a fully software-programmable KB3270 PLUS
keyboard as a "hardware emulator" for any kind of other keyboard,
past, present, and future.)

We are interested in info about "Internet", "Multimedia", or
"Office" keyboards like the Key Tronic KTMPS202XX or similar
products from Cherry, Microsoft, Logitech, Siemens, Silitek,
DEXXA, etc., which have extra keys above the function key row
or the Numpad, or which have extra keys between the cursor
and the 6-key-array, or right from the right shift key.
Unfortunately all such keyboards we have tested so far send
different scancodes, so there appears to be no standard
to follow (except for maybe the Sleep key - Simon Waite, where
are you???), so we will have to add a number of special modules
to FreeKEYB for all of them if we want to give users a chance
to redefine these keys with keystroke macros etc...

If you have an old and odd PC, XT, or AT-style keyboard
from AT&T (e.g. "301" or "302"), Hewlett Packard, Olivetti,
etc., an 8*4*-key PC keyboard, an 8*6*-key AT keyboard, an IBM
MF*1* or an AP keyboard, a 3270 or a 122-key keyboard please also
get into contact with us, similar, if you have a Brazillian
extended keyboard with 104 keys, a Japanese 101/104/107- or
106/109/112-key keyboard, or any kind of other special keyboard
that might need special support because it has extra keys or
a non-standard geometrical keyboard layout.

If you would like to help, but are unsure what to do exactly,
feel free to get into contact with us in private mail, so we
can assist you. On demand we can also send you our more
sophisticated KBDCHR test utility.

Thanks alot for your time and help,

 Matthias

-- 

Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany
<mailto:Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>; <mailto:mpaul AT drdos DOT org>
http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html; http://mpaul.drdos.org

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