VOGONS


First post, by dannyman

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Hello,

there is a relatively large group of people using DOSBox on the Sharp Zaurus PDAs.
However, this PDA has a Japanese keyboard layout which is similar, but not at all identical to the US keyboard layout.
The specific problem with DOSBox is that it's not simply a rearrangement of keys of the US layout, but that the shifted or otherwise modified functions of some keys of the Zaurus keyboard are not identical to the shifted / modified functions of a standard keyboard.

E.g. the ";" is on Fn-G (Fn being a specific modifier key), the ":" is on Fn-H. Using DOSBox's keyboard mapper we were not able to get the ":" on "Fn-H", but only on Shift-Fn-G (i.e. Shift-";").

We were not able to map the "_" at all (which is on Fn-B on the Zaurus) and the "/", which is on an own key, but Zaurus-system-internally mapped to Shift-"," was also not mappable yet.

In order to solve these problems, I thought a few adaption in bios_keyboard.cpp in the scan_to_scanascii function may help.
However, nobody knows the syntax of this function.

Any howtows, FAQs or so on this topic?

Or a simple answer aobut the syntax?

Thanks a lot!
daniel

Reply 1 of 3, by wd

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This is not possible. To use any sort of pc-emulator you have to ensure that
all hardware keys (ie. keys on the zaurus input device) map to an emulated
key (which is "non-layouted"). You can't do anything different at that level
because games read hardware scancodes, not ascii stuff.
If this works then you can use some keyboard layout (like keyb in old dos)
which translates scancode combinations (the combinations is the important
part here) so the command line input and some other things behave like
a foreign keyboard.

Don't know if it's possible to create a layout for zaurus, might be some work.
Have a look at the freedos keyb and kc (kl compiler) tools.

Reply 2 of 3, by dannyman

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Thanks for your answer,
however, games are not the purpose here, but rather older dos apps such as Lotus 1-2-3 or some mindmapping-, PIM and scientific programs.
Do such programs also read the hardware scancodes, like games?
Does it make a difference in feasibility?

thanks

daniel

Reply 3 of 3, by wd

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Well depends, older stuff might use the "read from console" int21 functions
which get ascii-codes.
Maybe try some pretty old dosbox version (0.61 or earlier i think), there a
different input style was used.