Hardware: Keyboard Setup
Published on 2018-04-26.
The software part of this project is largely focused on achieving the goal of compatibility and co-existence with existing QWERTx keyboards and operating systems:
- This keyboard provides basic functionality on machines where the corresponding software keymap has not be loaded.
- Existing QWERTx keyboards provide basic functionality after loading the software keymap for this keyboard.
The following – quite non-standard – firmware keymap accomplishes this by shuffling around the individual scancodes to match the scancodes that are sent with standard QWERTx keyboards. It also leverages a few uncommon scancodes to avoid reusing existing scancodes, as redefining existing scancodes with a different meaning causes trouble in cases where standard QWERTx and this keyboard are used at the same time.