PC keyboard

[Owain]

I think PS/2 can handle unlimited simultaneous key presses but USB is limited to 8?

Owain

[Dave Liquorice]

Yeah caps lock light is occasionally useful, WTF is my correctly typed password being rejected. The num lock one for seeing if the keyboard and computer are still talking to each other or has the machine locked up when normal typing doesn't produce anything.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Ditto for mine. I'm on my other one as the first one finally needed a clean.

They'll see me out, that's for sure.

[Jules Richardson]

Exactly, although IME caps lock functionaly normally seems to fail once the machine goes deep-space too, so no need for num-lock (and it's nice to hear that someone else uses the LEDs as a "dead system" test :-)

One day I might get around to seeing if I can add (non-destructively) a caps-lock LED to mine; I'm not sure if caps-lock is scanned as a stand- alone key or if it's strobed as the regular typing keys presumably are (the former making things a little easier).

cheers

Jules

[Owain]

Capslock is scanned as 58.

Host to Keyboard ED will turn on and off the Num Lock, Caps Lock & Scroll Lock LED's. After Sending ED, keyboard will reply with ACK (FA) and wait for another byte which determines their Status. Bit 0 controls the Scroll Lock, Bit 1 the Num Lock and Bit 2 the Caps lock. Bits 3 to 7 are ignored.

(includes circuit to send data to/from keyboard)

Owain

[Ramsman]

Thanks for all the suggestions (helpful and otherwise).

I'll probably go for a good Cherry with bells and whistles rather than a cheapo. That way there's no learning curve each time if there's a different layout, plus it's less hassle.