Ten years ago? Bloomin’ heck! Still as this still seems to get frequent hits, I suppose quick update is in order – I no longer use the Unicomp “naked” but go through a Soarer converter which is an easier way of mapping the keys and allows macros to be added.
Thanks to these guys (the thread eventually gets to the meaty details), I have changed my Unicomp 122-key keyboard (UB40T56) from a funky “be friendly to Windows IBM Terminal emulators” mode into something a little more interesting. Specifically each key should be sending a unique keycode – which if you select the right model from Unicomp, you’ll get.
This can be done by opening up the keyboard and removing the jumper from JP3 (just below a small chip and close to the scroll LED). In addition, it is strongly suggested that you set the kernel parameter “atkbd.softraw=0” which can be done with Ubuntu 10.04 with the following :-
- Edit /etc/default/grub and change the variable GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT to include “atkbd.softraw=0” at the end of what is already there.
- Finish editing and run grub-update and finally reboot.
Without this, showkey -s only shows the scancodes of keys that the kernel knows about – not what scancodes are sent by the keyboard! It is possible to show the unknown scancodes by enabling the i8042 module debug mode, but atkbd.softraw does the same thing more effectively.
This is currently a work in progress, and will need further checking before it can be taken as gospel, but …
| Group | Key | Make | Break | Keycode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Function Keys | ||||
| F13 | 5b | db | – | |
| F14 | 5c | dc | 95 | |
| F15 | 5d | dd | 183 | |
| F16 | 63 | e3 | – | |
| F17 | 64 | e4 | – | |
| F18 | 65 | e5 | – | |
| F19 | 66 | e6 | – | |
| F20 | 67 | e7 | – | |
| F21 | 68 | e8 | – | |
| F22 | 69 | e9 | – | |
| F23 | 6a | ea | – | |
| F24 | 6b | eb | – | |
| (next row) | F1 | 3b | bb | 59 |
| F2 | 3c | bc | 60 | |
| F3 | 3d | bd | 61 | |
| F4 | 3e | be | 62 | |
| F5 | 3f | bf | 63 | |
| F6 | 40 | c0 | 64 | |
| F7 | 41 | c1 | 65 | |
| F8 | 42 | c2 | 66 | |
| F9 | 43 | c3 | 67 | |
| F10 | 44 | c4 | 68 | |
| F11 | 57 | d7 | 87 | |
| F12 | 58 | d8 | 88 | |
| Left Keypad (Top left is “Esc”) | ||||
| Esc | 7e | fe | 121 | |
| Cent | 76 | f6 | 85 | |
| Print Screen | 72 | f2 | – | |
| Pause | e1 1d 45 | e1 9d c5 | 119 | |
| 74 | f4 | – | ||
| Help | 6d | ed | – | |
| Record | e0 2a e0 37 | e0 b7 e0 aa | 99 | |
| Play | 6f | ef | – | |
| GUI (Windows) | 75 | f5 | – | |
| Menu | 6c | ec | – | |
| Editing Pad (between QWERTY and Number Pad) | ||||
| Backtab | 5a | da | – | |
| Insert | e0 49 | e0 c9 | 104 | |
| PageUp | e0 51 | e0 d1 | 109 | |
| (next row) | Blue Return | e0 4f | e0 cf | 107 |
| Delete | e0 52 | e0 d2 | 110 | |
| Page Down | e0 53 | e0 d3 | 111 | |
| (next row) | Up Arrow | e0 48 | e0 c8 | 103 |
| (next row) | Left Arrow | e0 4b | e0 cb | 105 |
| Home | e0 47 | e0 c7 | 102 | |
| Right Arrow | e0 4d | e0 cd | 106 | |
| (next row) | Down Arrow | e0 50 | e0 d0 | 108 |
| Number Pad | ||||
| (top row) | End | 01 | 81 | 1 |
| Scroll Lock | 46 | c6 | 70 | |
| (shifted Scroll Lock) | Number Lock | 45 | c5 | 69 |
| / | 37 | b7 | 55 | |
| * | e0 c5 | e0 b5 | 98 | |
| (next row) | KP-7 | 47 | c7 | 71 |
| KP-8 | 48 | c8 | 72 | |
| KP-9 | 49 | c9 | 73 | |
| – | 4e | ce | 78 | |
| (next row) | KP-4 | 41 | cb | 75 |
| KP-5 | 4c | cc | 76 | |
| KP-6 | 4d | cd | 77 | |
| + | 4a | ca | 74 | |
| (next row) | KP-1 | 4f | cf | 79 |
| KP-2 | 50 | d0 | 80 | |
| KP-3 | 51 | d1 | 81 | |
| Enter | e0 1c | e0 9c | 96 | |
| (next row) | KP-0 | 52 | d2 | 82 |
| KP-. | 53 | d3 | 83 | |
- Group. To break things up a little, I’ve grouped the keys into the 5 separate parts of the keyboard – the function keys, the keypad to the left, the qwerty pad, the editing pad, and the number pad (“keypad”). The details of the qwerty pad will be the last as the other groups are more interesting (‘qwerty’ keys just work).
- Key. This is the label on the key on my keyboard. This may be different on different variants so in all cases I have started with the top left, worked left and down (the “qwerty” row before the “asdf” row).
- Make. This is the scancode produced when the key is pressed.
- Break. This is the scancode produced when the key is released.
- Keycode. The configured keycode produced on the Linux console. The red cells are values that are wrong, but in addition many are missing because they are not produced on a keypress. I say wrong because the keycode gives a result that does not match the key legend – in some cases dangerously wrong such as PageDown generating Delete. One thing to be aware of is that you must use “showkey -k” at the console to get the same numbers I have – X seems to add 8 to each keycode.
Three interesting oddities here … F14 and F15 have somehow been graced with keycodes by default; their scan codes must coincide with keys defined on more popular keyboards. And of course Num Lock and Scroll Lock sharing the same key is a little … odd. And lastly the Record key is effectively sending two keystrokes in one.
Fixing The Wrong Keys
The first place to start is to map the keys that return a keycode that represents a key other than that written on the keycap – such as the key marked “End” which thinks it is an “Esc” key. I have left out two of the wrong keys from this group as they fit better into the next section.
The wrong keys can be fixed with the following commands :-
setkeycodes 7e 1 # Esc setkeycodes e049 82 # Insert setkeycodes e051 105 # PageUp setkeycodes e052 111 # Delete setkeycodes e053 109 # PageDown setkeycodes 01 107 # End setkeycodes 37 98 # KP-/ setkeycodes e035 55 # KP-* setkeycodes 4e 74 # KP-- setkeycodes 4a 78 # KP-+
I have left out a couple of the wrong keys from this section as they do not return dangerously incorrect values, and they fit more logically into the next section (being Record and Blue Return).
Dealing With The Extra Keys
Now onto dealing with the extra keys. The tricky bit here was coming up with new keycodes for these keys that did not conflict with existing keycodes, and were reasonable. This is effectively impossible, as xmodmap -pk appears to show no significant range of unused keycodes although some of the used keycodes are for things like “Shop” buttons!
So I picked a range with a larger number of useless key symbols and some unused ones :-
setkeycodes 5b 222 # F13 setkeycodes 5c 223 # F14 setkeycodes 5d 224 # F15 setkeycodes 63 225 # F16 setkeycodes 64 237 # F17 setkeycodes 65 238 # F18 setkeycodes 66 228 # F19 setkeycodes 67 229 # F20 setkeycodes 68 230 # F21 setkeycodes 69 231 # F22 setkeycodes 6a 232 # F23 setkeycodes 6b 233 # F24 setkeycodes 72 99 # Record (after keyswap) setkeycodes 74 209 # Print setkeycodes 6d 138 # Help setkeycodes 6f 239 # Play setkeycodes 75 234 # Windows (GUI) setkeycodes 6c 240 # Menu setkeycodes 5a 235 # Backtab setkeycodes e04f 236 # BlueReturn
Once this has run, we can look at fixing the X mappings … which is why F17 and F18 are out of sequence in the above! One key has to be (at least until someone comes up with a better solution!) sorted out with a keycap swap. Take the keycap from the Record key and swap it for the one marked “Print Screen”. This is because the scancode for Record is effectively two scancodes in one and attempting to remap it will result in strange things happening.
Sorting Out X11
Once you have a set of keycodes that don’t do funny things under X (for instance F17 and F18 when in sequence produce not a keystroke under X11 but some other event), you can move onto configuring the X keyboard. The following attempts to map as close to the keycaps as possible without going to extremes :-
xmodmap -e "keycode 230 = F13" xmodmap -e "keycode 231 = F14" xmodmap -e "keycode 232 = F15" xmodmap -e "keycode 233 = F16" xmodmap -e "keycode 245 = F17" xmodmap -e "keycode 246 = F18" xmodmap -e "keycode 236 = F19" xmodmap -e "keycode 237 = F20" xmodmap -e "keycode 238 = F21" xmodmap -e "keycode 239 = F22" xmodmap -e "keycode 240 = F23" xmodmap -e "keycode 241 = F24" xmodmap -e "keycode 217 = Print" xmodmap -e "keycode 9 = Escape 3270_Attn" xmodmap -e "keycode 93 = cent bar" xmodmap -e "keycode 175 = 3270_Record" xmodmap -e "keycode 175 =" xmodmap -e "keycode 247 = 3270_Play" xmodmap -e "keycode 242 = Super_L" xmodmap -e "keycode 248 = Multi_key" xmodmap -e "keycode 243 = 3270_BackTab" xmodmap -e "keycode 118 = Insert 3270_Duplicate" xmodmap -e "keycode 112 = Prior 3270_Jump" xmodmap -e "keycode 117 = Next 3270_Rule"
This results in a keyboard that more or less matches the key caps. For some of the blue symbols, you press the key in combination with shift.
The number pad could do with a little more attention in the realm of X-mapping, and there are a few blue symbols on the main qwerty pad that might be usefully mapped, but this is sufficient for my purposes.