On 7/12/06, Blaster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Has anyone had any experience with any compact keyboards on Sunrays? I've
located this model http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=AA36330
which seems be basically a laptop keyboard sans laptop.
Any USB keyboard should be basically OK. PS/2 keyboards
with USB adapters are sometimes OK but sometimes a complete
nightmare, I'd avoid those if at all possible. Extra ("Internet" or
"Media") buttons outside the main keyboard probably won't work
in either case.
Two big things to watch out for are layout identification and the
availability of keys that are interpreted specially by Sun Ray.
USB keyboards are supposed to report a country layout code, and
Sun Ray uses that layout code to choose a keyboard translation
table. Keyboards aimed at the PC market typically don't report
a proper layout code, they report "0" and leave it up to the system
to figure out what keyboard table to use. Sun Ray (and Solaris)
defaults to a US layout for code 0 but you can change that. The
gotcha is that the choice is system-wide, which is OK as long as
all of your code 0 keyboards need the same keytable but fails
badly if you have different keyboard layouts all reporting code 0.
PC keyboards also rarely have a Power key or sound volume
keys. This means that you can't use Control-Power to restart the
Sun Ray and you can't use VolUp-VolDown-Mute to get a status
pop-up.
I haven't been able to locate anything like this with a 3 button pointer.
How good is the support for non-Sun USB keyboards and touch pads in general
for Sunray?
Third-party mice and trackballs are generally fine. Scroll-wheel
mice were problematic for a while because USB doesn't have a
standard for scroll-wheel reports, but we've now encountered
enough of the things to have fairly robust wheel event detection
logic.
We have practically no experience with third-party touch pads.
This might mean that they all work flawlessly, but it's at least
as likely that next to nobody is using them or perhaps that they
just don't work at all. The Tadpole Sun Ray laptops have a
touch pad but I don't know whether any special firmware hacks
were needed to support that particular device.
OttoM.
__
ottomeister
Disclaimer: These are my opinions. I do not speak for my employer.
_______________________________________________
SunRay-Users mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.filibeto.org/mailman/listinfo/sunray-users
