[PD] Using two qwerty keyboards (one standard, one USB) attached to the

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Oct 27, 2004, at 6:16 AM, CK wrote:

> I read:
>> I have a spare USB qwerty keyboard lying around not doing anything
>> useful, and I was wondering whether it is possible to have two  
>> keyboards
>> connected to the same PC (running GNU/Linux Red Hat 9 PlanetCCRMA)
>> without the OS getting horribly confused.  Has anyone tried this
>> successfully?
>
> I'm curenntly investigating this, but it looks like what was easy with
> the mouse is a terrible mess with keyboards (I'd love to be corrected)
>
> see->  
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/ 
> XFree-Local-multi-user-HOWTO.html
>    -> http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/3100/1/
>    -> http://www.ltn.lv/~aivils/

Yes, this should be quite easy to do on GNU/Linux as long as you are  
using the Linux input event system.  Any relatively recent 2.4.x kernel  
will support it, or all 2.6.x kernels.  Basically, if you load the  
'evdev' module, all USB devices get their own /dev/input/event? device.  
  So your USB keyboard will show up there.  What I don't know off hand  
is how the console and X/GNOME/KDE will deal with multiple keyboards.   
I'd be interested to hear whether  all of the keyboards' output is  
grabbed.

>
>> How do you set it up (what externals etc do I need)?
>
> see above, hans' linux hid/event objects wil come in handy once it  
> works I
> guess.
>

Yup, the [hid] object I am working on right now will do this now no  
problem.  This works with [linuxevent] as well, but my [linux*] objects  
are deprecated since [hid] does all that they do and much more in a  
cross-platform manner.  I'd love to have alpha/beta testers!

.hc

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