sun keyboards on linux x86 machines.

Elijah L. Wright (elw@wc-rt.tntech.edu)
Fri, 03 Apr 1998 13:31:45 -0600 (CST)


> Subject: Q: Sun4 keyboard for Intel: driver?
> Looking at a Sun type 4 keyboard, a friend noticed it had 15 pins, and could
> be plugged into the gameport/joystick port. Has anyone written a driver to
> let us use these keyboards with our x86 PC's? For those of us who have
> experienced these keyboards, I don't think we need to be sold on how nice
> they are to use.

You mean a Sun3 keyboard, right? 15-pin D-connector??? Sun type-4 kb's
have a connector like a ps/2 or macintosh printer cable.....

On the other hand, you might have a type-4 with the funny cable that sun
sold to convert from the round connector to the sun3 d-shell... i've got
one of those, and it sure is nice compared to a real type-3 keyboard....

My guess would be that the serial voltages are going to be slightly screwy
in converting between a gameport and a sun keyboard... you might have to
have a few resistors or something wired in there. :)

NetBSD has patches to treat the kb/mouse interface on a Sun3 as if it were
serial ports 2 and 3. ports 0 and 1 (ttya/b) have flow control, 2/3
don't. :) not sure exactly what voodoo you have to do to make it work,
since all my sun3 gear is in the closet and powered down..... *chuckle*

you could probably filch a driver's guts or some documentation on how they
have it working from a combo of the sparc arch source and perusing the BSD
sources for *interesting* ideas..... :)

--elijah

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