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Problem Using an IBM XT/AT Keyboard on a New System

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mpauley

New Member
Joined
Jul 5, 2007
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2
All,

I'm hoping that somebody can help me with the following problem: I am a fan of old keyboards. A couple of months ago I found a like-new IBM XT (83 key) keyboard on eBay that I bought to use on my office machine (a year-old Dell workstation; in academia they let us do things like this). With the help of an XT to AT converter/adapter that I purchased from www.clickykeyboard.com, the keyboard (mostly) works great. Although I miss a numeric keypad and dedicated arrow keys, I have no problems with the keyboard on Windows (actually, that's not competely true: the PrtSc key doesn't work but I have found a work-around for this). The problem comes in when I log into a Unix/Linux machine (using a terminal emulator; e.g., PuTTY). Although the arrow keys work fine at the command line, they don't work correctly when I use a text editor. In particular, in vim (my editor of choice), pressing an arrow results in a letter being typed (e.g., the down arrow = 'r'); the same thing happens in nano. I have the same problem at home where I use an original IBM AT (84 key) keyboard. Is there any way to "remap" the arrow keys so that they work correctly in these applications? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mark
 
mpauley said:
All,

I'm hoping that somebody can help me with the following problem: I am a fan of old keyboards. A couple of months ago I found a like-new IBM XT (83 key) keyboard on eBay that I bought to use on my office machine (a year-old Dell workstation; in academia they let us do things like this). With the help of an XT to AT converter/adapter that I purchased from www.clickykeyboard.com, the keyboard (mostly) works great. Although I miss a numeric keypad and dedicated arrow keys, I have no problems with the keyboard on Windows (actually, that's not competely true: the PrtSc key doesn't work but I have found a work-around for this). The problem comes in when I log into a Unix/Linux machine (using a terminal emulator; e.g., PuTTY). Although the arrow keys work fine at the command line, they don't work correctly when I use a text editor. In particular, in vim (my editor of choice), pressing an arrow results in a letter being typed (e.g., the down arrow = 'r'); the same thing happens in nano. I have the same problem at home where I use an original IBM AT (84 key) keyboard. Is there any way to "remap" the arrow keys so that they work correctly in these applications? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mark
Click to expand...

Perhaps something like an Omnikey that has both layouts combined?...
 
The XT keyboard is scan-code set 1, which is quite different than a keyboard designed for an AT (scan-code set 2 or better). The obvious difference is the number of keys and their placement. An arrow key is not necessarily an arrow key - it depends on the placement on the keyboard! (Even the shift keys are seen as two different keys.)

If you were using something ancient like NCSA telnet you would be able to configure the keyboard and what the actions are using the utilities provided with NCSA telnet. I'm afraid you are going to be out of luck if you are using something like Putty - that software is much newer that it relies on Windows to do the keyboard handling. And it's probably inconceivable to the authors that you might be running with a PC XT keyboard and generating those scan codes.

I'm actually very suprised that old keyboard works on your Dell. Is it connected straight to the computer, or did you use some sort of USB adapter?
 
Thanks to those who responded.

The keyboard is not connected directly to the computer. As dongfeng indicated, it is connected via an adapter box (see http://tinyurl.com/yuhd3a).

Experimenting last night, I found a solution: In the keyboard options (under Terminal) PuTTY provides a NetHack option for "Initial State of numeric keypad" (see attached image). With this choice selected, the arrow keys work fine in vim (haven't tried nano yet).

Mark
 

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