| From: | Alastair M. Robinson |
| Date: | 19 Oct 2000 at 20:56:56 |
| Subject: | Re: Keyboard I/F |
Hi Andy,
> I'm really getting fed up at the moment with my keyboard. The actual thing
> itself (that I got with my tower) works without any hassle whatsoever, but
> the mapping is getting on my nerves.
> The problem I have is with teh Amiga Keys, they're mapped to F11 & F12 which
> makes life amazingly difficult for everyday keyboard shortcuts like copy,
> paste etc. especially when I'm using the mouse at the same time. Why can't
> I use the otherwise redundant Windows keys?
Yeah, with the appropriate interface that can be done, but I personally
prefer the behaviour of my A4000 inferface, bought from Dart Electronics
"several" years ago. Their adverts vanished from CU long before the mag
closed, so I somehow doubt they're still going ;-(
Anyway, on my interface, the cursor-key thing works as you describe, but the
Amiga keys are mapped to the control keys, and the Caps Lock key doubles as
control and caps lock. Weird as this might seem, it does have the *huge*
advantage that control is where you expect it to be from using Amiga
keyboards, and more importantly, keyboard shortcuts for Open, Save, Cut,
Copy, Paste, etc. are physically identical on Amiga and PC programs.
Getting used to using the Windoze keys as qualifiers is going to cause you
major grief when you have to use real PCs ;-)
> I've been told before that the F11/F12 mapping is Hardcoded in the interface
> (a eyetech EZKEY-SE I believe) Is this true? If it isn't possible to
Yep, the mapping is built into the microcontroller firmware.
> change via software, are there any keyboard adapters that do have this kind
> of mapping (idealy with the cursor mapping too)?
Ermm - well my Dart interface does, but that probably won't help. If you
don't mind a bit of DIY there's a project on Aminet (based on a PIC)
which does what you need. It's an example project in the EPIC package
IIRC. It has a *really* neat way of choosing between two different
mappings: You open up a text-editor window, press a particular key,
and the interface 'types' a menu for you! I seem to remember that neither
mapping did quite what I wanted, so I made some modifcations of my own.
The only problem I found with it was it doesn't have any kind of timeout
on transmission - so if the Amiga crashes so badly it stops talking to the
interface, you can't use the keyboard to reset!
Sometime, I might have a go at fixing this problem, and add support for
those new-fangled multimedia hotkeys while I'm at it - that could be fun!
All the best,
You can tell a real programmer by the keyboard dents in his forehead
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