Soarer's converter with a Zenith ZKB-2R

JollySkeletor · 19 Oct 2017, 18:41

Hey folks. I wonder if anyone has any experience with soarer's converter and a ZKB-2R? I made mine up and it works perfectly fine - however, it would appear the arrow keys are sending the same keycode as what would be sent by the corresponding numpad keys. This confused the hell out me when I was using something that was looking specifically for arrow key input. Anyone know how to fix this? or is this simply a quirk of this board + adaptor. Thanks

JollySkeletor · 19 Oct 2017, 18:47

A quick look at the way it's been programmed it looks very intentional. The board itself is in AT mode - despite this looking like an XT style hack.

orihalcon · 19 Oct 2017, 19:25

I think the best way to fix is to remap those keys to what you want. Then you can map Num Lock to go back to the regular functions as an ifselect layer if that doesn't bring them back to number functions when pressed.

JollySkeletor · 19 Oct 2017, 20:23

Half fixed it with the following config:

remapblock
layer 0
PAD_8 UP
PAD_4 LEFT
PAD_2 DOWN
PAD_6 RIGHT
endblock

I'm not a massive user of the numpad anyway. But i'm confused as to whether the duplicated keycodes are coming from the board itself or from the converter (I would have to guess the board)

Chyros · 19 Oct 2017, 20:50

You shouldn't need to do this with a Soarers. It is clearly stuck in XT mode, but shouldn't need tweaking. See if rebooting helps, that generally fixes it.

JollySkeletor · 19 Oct 2017, 21:17

Chyros wrote: ↑You shouldn't need to do this with a Soarers. It is clearly stuck in XT mode, but shouldn't need tweaking. See if rebooting helps, that generally fixes it.

The switch on the board is definitely in AT mode. (physically anyway) If I switch to XT the converter just stops working. The board gets power (the beeper works) but there's no output. I did wonder whether it was stuck in XT mode, so I forced the converter to run in AT mode with "force set2" - but it worked just the same.

JollySkeletor · 19 Oct 2017, 21:21

ok, it's definitely something wrong with the converter. Just tried out my blue brick with it and the arrow keys work fine.

JollySkeletor · 19 Oct 2017, 21:30

Now i'm officially bamboozled. I tried my acer101a - had the same broken setup. Swapped back to the zenith and now it's working as intended. perhaps it's something to do with the keyboard id.

Chyros · 19 Oct 2017, 21:59

I found if you use an XT keyboard, it tends to get stuck in that mode even if you plug in an AT keyboard. It's generally fixed just by rebooting. I'm pretty sure it will revert to normal if you just keep using it now.

orihalcon · 20 Oct 2017, 05:35

You can also force the code set so you don't have to worry about it choosing the right one on initial startup.

Would just put a line at the top of your code that says:

force set2

Or if that doesn't do it:

force set2ext

Those are the two possible AT code sets available. Though if you do the force set and want to use that same Soarer's Converter with a different keyboard, then you'll have to change your code again, or just delete that line.

Other thing that could be complicating things is whether you are using with with a Mac or not, have seen the same keyboard behave one way on a Mac and differently on Windows probably because of the fact that MacOS doesn't recognize "non-num lock mode" as Apple keyboards don't have Nav Functions assigned to the keypad

JollySkeletor · 20 Oct 2017, 16:34

Done some poking around and it looks like soarers doesn't like being connected to a potentially disconnected but powered usb hub, and or it doesn't like my USB 3 controller. It works perfectly in my USB 2 ports that are directly connected to my motherboard.