On Fri, 28 Jul 2000, Michael J. Hussmann wrote:
> The Newton keyboard is a serial device and the Palm/Visor port is a
> serial port, so in principle it should be possible to connect the
> Stowaway to the Newton. You only need to figure out which line is which.
> The slightly trickier part is the software you need to write -- a little
> extension that makes the Newton believe the Stowaway is really a Newton
> keyboard. As far as I remember, someone on this list had already figured
> out the protocol used by the Newton keyboard.
The Newton keyboard's format is quite unique, I believe - it bears no
relation to ASCII or anything else. There are basically key up and key
down events sent; most significant bit determines if it's an up or a
down. It also, upon powerup, sends a string.
For a quick hack, conversting NewtKey would be the best thing to do. It's
a simple and working keyboard driver designed for the old 1.x devices to
use the (officially 2.0 only) keyboards. It could trivially be modified
to work with any protocol keyboard, and I belive it works just fine with
newer devices/ OSs.
I'll look aorund for protocol info as soon as I have a slightly beter 'net
connection, when bell atlantic decides to bring my DSL link back up. They
switched modem types on me, which is fine, 'cept they figured out how to
disconnect the old link but not how to connect the new one. So no
DSL. They also forgot to send the modem out, and then sent it to the wrong
address. But I'm just ranting now so I'll go to sleep. They annoy me.
gopi.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Aug 01 2000 - 06:50:09 CDT