Re: Sun keyboard on i386?

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> Isn't there a way a userland programm can inject events into wskbd(4)
> / wsmux(4)?

Hm, I should look at that then.  Might be difficult to figure out how,
but it also might not.

I should also try to do something for wscons like my 1.4T kmmux....

> Completely other solution, you may have a look at this:
> http://www.kbdbabel.org/

Might be worth doing.  It'd save me a serial port and let me use it as
console; I dunno if that's worth the substantially more complicated
electronics.  (Sun 2/3/4/5 keyboards on a serial port need just level
shifting; the protocol is vanilla serial, just with TTL voltage levels
instead of RS232 voltage levels.  Protocol conversion is significantly
more elaborate.)

> Strange that you call a Sun type 3 keyboard "good".  They are one of
> the most hideously keyboards I've come across.

Keyboard taste is intensely personal.  When I speak of the Sun type-3
as good, I mean, good for my use; I mean nothing more.  Whether it's
good for anyone else's use depends entirely on the person.  (Actually,
the type-3 is good in one other, person-independent, sense: the
interface to it is very simple, both at the electrical level and at the
protocol level.  Contrast with the PS/2 interface which is a horrible
error-prone botch designed, apparently, to save one wire on the cable -
at least, I can't think of any other reason both directions' data would
be wire-ORed together.)

> Close to a DEC LK201.

Good heavens, no.  The LK201 is mushier, it loses the key to the right
of right shift, it inserts a key between Z and left shift, it collapses
what on a type-3 are \| and '~ into a single key, and it collapses the
keys to the right of ]} and '" into a single key.  It's also lacking
three of the four bucky-bit keys on either side of the spacebar and it
moved the keys to the left of the main letter keypad over to the right,
so instead of the letter keypad being surrounded by extra keys, all the
extra keys are off to the right.  At least, that's what I see based on
an LK201 and Sun type-3 I have handy.

All of those are negatives for me.  For someone who prefers the DEC
way, I daresay, they'd be positives.  I have are numerous other issues
with the LK201, but they're all minor and/or fixable in software.

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