On Mon, Dec 11, 2000 at 09:42:12AM -0800, Timothy Swenson wrote:
> In the US there is a company giving away a little barcode scanner called the
> CueCat. It plugs in in serial with the keyboard and puts it's info into the
> keyboard queue. I've tested it with the standard QL with the Keyboard-90
> interface and it works. A test is to open a text editor, scan a barcode, and
> some garbled text will appear in the editor (it's encrypted so only the CueCat
> software can use it, but the encryption has been broken).
>
> On the Q40 I have some problems. Under SMSQ/E, I get nothing in the text
> editor and soon the keyboard locks up. Under Linux (ussing vi), I get the
> phrase "unknown scancode 0" over and over again (looping). I have to unplug
> the keyboard (and CueCat) to get the keyboard back again.
>
> I'm guessing there is some hardware incompatability existing between the CueCat
> and the Q40. I've found some info on the web on the "unknown scancode" under
> Linux, but it mentioned getting two number after the text. Anybody know more
> about this "unknown scancode" and Q40/Linux?
the Q40 is hardwired to use AT scancodes which is somewhat unusual
whereas I suspect the older Keyboard-90 IF uses PC codes.
If it keeps receiving 'scancode 0' indefinitely then I would suspect
a synchronisation error, iirc PC and AT keyboard protocols use different
parameters for the serial transmission which would explain it.
Scancode 0 is indeed illegal in both PC and AT encodings.
If you want to use this barcode reader on the Q40 it might be possible
to build a simple adapter to plug it into a serial port.
The "unknown scancode" is from me, there are still a few keys that
aren't correctly decoded in Q40-Linux. This will be fixed once and for
all times in 2.5 Kernels which will use the input device system.
Bye
Richard
