Some Hints for USB Keyboards (might be usefull for Blender)
  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    Bladerunner
    Posts: 418 from 2004/2/19
    Well, I am not sure how usefull the following might be (are there any USB Keyboard Users beside me?) However, as I had some difficulties and at least must have made some people laugh (I guess) in the MorphOS Chan today, because my Keyboard was totaly fucked up, I thought I write this down, perhaps it helps somebody else ;)

    ah before I forget it, please make a backup of your current settings (envarc:sys/poseidon.prefs) It might become handy for a whorst case scenario, if you manage to totaly fuck up your keyboard settings ;) )

    When I used my USB Keyboard the first time, almost everything worked fine out of the box. However some things didn`t work, at least for me. First thing to be solved was the caps lock key. I don`t remember whether this key did actually work or not, it is a long time ago, when I changed the settings, however what did not work was to enable/disable the capslock LED, so one did never know whether the key was pressed or not.

    to solve that do the following:

    Open your Systemsettings, browse to your keyboard device (In my case a Cherry Keyboard) and hit the settings button. One (or two, at least for my Keyboard) Windows will open. Select the "Action" Tab
    it might be a good Idea to enable the "track incoming events" Button, then press your capslock key and dissable "track incoming events" again.

    Before we continue, please make sure that your capslock key is in the right state (no capital letters)

    We now need to define 4 events for this key, most likely you have allready at least one event defined. But that doesn`t matter, Just add 3 new events so that in the end you have the required 4 events.

    First entry:
    For Type select "Qualifiers" Trigger is "Down"
    In the field "Change Key Qualifiers" select "Toggle" and as qualifier "Caps lock"
    (btw, the same is mentioned in the Poseidon Manual)

    Second entry:
    this will set the caps lock led on
    type is "HID output" Trigger is "Down"
    We need to press the button "CC" now
    a new area apears "Pre-condition code"
    now adjust the pull down menus so that it reads:
    If "USB qualifiers" "bw and" "Constant"

    now set the values for "left" and "right constant"
    "left constant" is 0 "right constant" is 4 (the correct values are also somewhere mentioned in the Poseidon manual)

    In the HID output variables there should be an entry for your caps lock LED. Select that. Finally set the operation tab to "Set"

    the third entry:
    Actually this entry is almost identical to the second entry, you have to change two things though:
    in the pre condition code area "bw and" has to be "bw nand" (noticed the n?)
    Operation has to be set to "Clear"

    the last entry is very simple:
    Just select keymapping and for trigger "any"

    thats it. If everything went right, you *should" be able
    to use your caps lock key *with* the corospondendig LED
    If not.. well.. you did make a backup from your poseidon.prefs didn`t you?

    But now lets solve another Problem, which I had today and which made me write this little guide actually.

    You know Blender I guess (If not, where have you been the last months?) it is very powerfull but one realy has to learn the interface. Luckily there are tons of tutorials in the net, so this shouldn`t be a problem.

    What was a problem, was the fact that the mentioned numeric pad keys didn`t behave like they should. for example pressing numpad 0, 1, 2 and so on should change the object view, but it didn`t instead i switched through the layers. (Which is actually right, but only for the numbers not on the numpad block)
    I was wondering whether this was a problem in the MOS Blender Port, but it wasn`t, as it worked according to some people, right with a PS2 Keyboard. So I tried again the USB Stack Settings....

    One note: My Num Pad is working now, at least it is usable with Blender. However, it behaves somewhat "strange" and I have to check whether this behaviour is actually normal, or if there is something which I have to adjust.
    This is what happens: if I activate numpad, I am able to use the numblock in Blender as supposed (I can switch the differen view modes) However, backspace seems not to work with num pad activated, more curious this is not true for every application, MuiCon for example behave as it should, backspace is working there. But in GoldED 6 you will have 8 when you press backspace. Some other Keys behave strange as well. So it is neccesarry that you have your Numpad LED configured as well. If someone knows whether this behaviour is actually normal or how one could change this (or if this is only true for my cherry keyboard) please let me know.

    For the configuration:
    The same steps as for the caps lock key are neccesary.
    So i will only mention the differences here:

    First entry:
    qualifier has to be "Numeric pad"

    Second entry:
    Value for right constant is "256" HID output variable is "Num Lock" here

    Third entry:
    Same as above

    Fourth entry:
    No change

    Thats it, you should have now a working numpad key with LED. Now hit use and save your settings.

    Btw there are other usefull things you can do, for example configure your multimedia keys so they work with your favorite Browser/Player/Email Client.

    Another nice thing I have to mention:
    My Keyboard has several additional keys which are not used. There are two Keys with a big arrow up/down.
    Well I configured them to iconify windows (very handy when you have several windows opend in ambient but also e.g. in Art Effect) Well you did know that you can iconify/uniconify windows with MorphOS didn`t you?

    This is how I did that:
    Select your favourite Key which you didn`t have a use until now (remember the Track incoming events button?)
    add a new event
    select "Keystring" and trigger "down"
    for iconifying a selected window you have to insert the following sequence in the "string to send" field:

    <control lalt i>


    Now do the same for another button.
    the sequence you have to send here is

    <control lalt u>

    (when you press this, a menu will pop up where you can select your iconified window again)

    Now, thats it.
    As I said, i hope that someone will find this usefull or can enhance this little guide (for example I am sure there is a way to check with all those variables thingy whether the caps lock key is allready pressed and the LED is toggled according the current key state. Or how to solve the problem with num pad)
    If it`s totally usless, well then forgive me for wasting your bandwith :D
  • »13.10.05 - 18:02
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