I'd just like to rant and ask - what were they thinking?

Getting raw data from the keyboard is trivial (and I note that the recently purchased second hand Dell keyboard that I'm playing with both works at 3.3v and 5v, and takes so little current that it doesn't show on my power supply) but converting the output into something useful is, um, a non-trivial activity...

It probably doesn't help that I don't want to limit myself to the normal typing block - I also want to implement ctrl, alt, and ctrl-alt combinations for letters and ctrl and alt for numbers (though I'm not sure I'll ever use the latter) and definitely want the function keys and caps lock. Oh, and a pound sign '£', what with being English and all. Which isn't an ascii codepoint anyway, but lives on shift-3 on a UK keyboard.

So I've had to redefine (cough, 'extend') the ascii set to use eight bits:


Code is as yet incomplete; it's in C to run on an STM arm chip which will act as an SPI slave to a 65c02 and also provide serial interfaces. The combination of press and release and oddball (unnecessary) extension codes makes it interesting.

Neil

Might not want to ask.

I've wondered about this myself. 7-bits could transmit some 128 scan codes with a make/break bit. Most keyboards don't have that many keys, yet, keys like Home, End, etc needed an "extended" scan code..... IDK why.



Most of the time I've just processed the scan codes on the CPU itself. (Though that was for x86 based OSes I've tinkered with)

For 65xxx setups I've considered throwing the work onto a PIC16F871 where I can use it's own internal memory as a ring buffer, and raise an interrupt when there's data available.

That's the plan with an STM32L073, largely because I've got a box full of the damn things

Nice that it can handle up to five serial ports as well, with internal buffering, though I'm only planning for one.

So we have an 8048 talking to an STM arm talking to a 65C02. The eighties called - they want their processors back!

Neil

p.s. The windows event loop throws (threw? I'm not current with anything 64-bit) keypresses and releases onto the event chain and lets the application sort out what it needs, but it does some pre-processing of the data so the application never sees the extended code or the release code, just a defined key code. I'm not planning on telling the 6502 when a key is released, but I am leaving an option to return raw data on request.

To some extent. (Win32 API is still the under pins Win64, so not much has changed there)

I know with DirectX you can get a lot more detail about the make/break codes. But I recall looking through the Quake 2 source code way back in the day, and as I recall, Carmack just used the normal Win32 key events; so apparently they were "good enough".

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Yup! Left off the ä, ö, ü, and ß, too... UTF-8 is not in my immediate plans. I just feel that if I have a £ key, it ought to do something.

Neil

Even more trivial when you plug the data wire into the correct pin on the Nucleo...

Neil

Encouraging. The majority of the keyboard is producing something useful, and in the majority of cases the right something. I still need to sort out the 0xe0 prefixed keys, and for some reason the numeric key pad is all over the place - probably my lookup table is incorrect.

Neil

There must be a more elegant way to handle shift and capslock... capslock has to shift the alpha characters only, unless shift is active, but the number keys have to respond to shift but ignore capslock.

Shift is true when the shift key is held; capslock is toggled whenever it's pressed. Ukupper and uklower are tables where the scancode indexes the desired keyboard mapping.



That works, but it feels ugly...

Neil

So here's a mostly complete keyboard driver to translate PS/2 keycodes - including function keys and cursor controls into a modified ascii output on key press ( key release is ignored except for the control, shift, alt etc keys which are handled internally).

A few odd keys are ignored and some may cause immediately following keys to be ignored - particularly print-screen, scroll-lock, and pause-break. This is for my Compaq keyboard - UK 104 layout; it's obvious where to change the keyboard mapping.

0x00-0x1a: ctrl-A to ctrl-Z
0x1b: ESC
0x1c: ctrl-TAB
0x1d: alt-TAB
0x1e: shift-TAB (for text editors)
0x1f: UK Pound
0x20-0x7f: normal ascii characters
0x81-0x9a: alt-A to alt-Z
0xa1-0xba: ctrl-alt-A to ctrl-alt-Z
Cursor keys:
0xe0: left
0xe1: right
0xe2: up
0xe3: down
0xe4: page up
0xe5: page down
0xe6: home
0xe7: end
0xe8: insert
And the function keys: 0xf1-0xfc.

There is no number lock; I prefer it as a number pad all the time but it's easy enough to add.

For what it's worth, the interrupt routine to grab the next bit is five lines of code and the test for completion another five...

Neil

Maybe something like so?



(Haven't tried this logic myself, but I think that might be closer to what you're looking for)

Thanks Yuri, much tidier. Needs a || in the middle instead of a | but that's what I couldn't get my head round. (I only have a small execution stack in my head and it kept overflowing )

I've also modified the alt/ctrl logic so that alt-alpha is now the more logical 0xc0-0xdf and ctrl-alt-alpha 0x80-0x9f.

Neil

So what does Ctrl-\ give? And Ctrl-] Ctrl-^ Ctrl-_

I use 0x80+n for function keys and 0xC0+n for editing keys with Shift,Ctrl,Alt encoded in b6-b5-b4, allowing 0xD5=Shift-TAB, 0xE5=Ctrl-TAB, 0xF5=Alt-TAB.

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JGH - http://mdfs.net

It shouldn't give anything. I only applied the control and tab modifiers to alpha keys. Also, shift is ignored if control or alt are active.

Neil

I've also just noticed you've got: 0xe0: left, 0xe1: right, 0xe2: up, 0xe3: down.
Cursor controls are ordered 8,9,10,11 left,right,down,up so it's always useful to order input cursor controls the same, ie:
base+0:left, base+1:right, base+2:down, base+3:up, similarly:
base+0:home, base+1:end, base+2:pgdn, base+3:pgup

Eg, my code has &C8-&CF as home,end,pgdn,pgup,left,right,down,up
(quickly checks docs... make sure I'm not talking rubbish )

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JGH - http://mdfs.net