its helpful to understand about keyboard ghosting..
Keyboard Ghosting Explained
31–40 of 99 posts
Re: Keyboard Ghosting Explained
#32Fun Fact: The standard USB keyboard protocol can't handle more than... 6? non-modifier keys being pressed at the same time. IIRC, to get past this, all you need to do is emulate a hub with fifteen or twenty keyboards attached. Then you can press every key at once!
Not true. A USB keyboard must declare the number of simultaneously pressed keys it is able to report. It just happens that the example descriptor included in the USB spec has this value set to 6.
Re: Keyboard Ghosting Explained
#33In which cases are such keyboards necessary? I use a $3 one (which I bought to replace the one I used for over a decade) and I've never had such issues. I use this keyboard for coding and gaming, not just for common tasks which require low performance.
I use a Model M and sometimes encounter ghosting. Some types of gaming are worse than others. For example, while playing RTS or MOBA I do not encounter ghosting while playing FPS I encounter it on a regular basis. This is because in RTS and MOBA while you might be rapidly hitting your keys you should be hitting them in succession, not simultaneously! In the FPS on the other hand you might be trying to walk forward an…
Makes sense. I barely play FPSs anymore, but I can imagine the scenarios that you describe, and after testing the keyboard on that site, it's clear that my actions would fail on such scenarios.
So, I take it that anti-ghosting measures are primarily meant for gaming keyboards.
Re: Keyboard Ghosting Explained
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
And this was continuing the practise of Apple's previous Apple Desktop Bus keyboards (like the beloved M0116 http://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_Standard_Keyboard ) which had ADB ports on both sides, mainly so that you could daisy-chain the mouse onto the keyboard. It's really dismal that this hasn't become standard on USB keyboards.
The extended AT layout one always seemed to be more beloved: http://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_Extended_Keyboard Back then Macintoshes were advertised as "keyboard not included" so Apple got to soak you for a very well-engineered item.
> The extended AT layout one always seemed to be more beloved
Perhaps: M0115 vs. M0116 is probably the quintessential AT vs. compact layout conflict, though, so I'm sure there were plenty of supporters on either side. I also assume that the compact M0116 actually sold significantly more, as I've almost never seen an extended keyboard used with a non-modular Mac like the SE or Classic. The M0115 was consciously part of the Macintosh II revolution (or counter-revolution?): SJ was famously among the people who presumably preferred the M0116 http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/841771 .
Re: Keyboard Ghosting Explained
#35I'm surprised the term "rollover" wasn't referenced here. Is it nonstandard? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_(key)
The explanation is for the layman. They probably didn't want to use a technical term.
Re: Keyboard Ghosting Explained
#36One of my favourite games - Star Control II had a DOS program to test what keys were not blocking - so two players were able to choose 2x6 = 12 keys in total that would never block.
And then for a while was the craze for finding this good old keyboard (IBM, HP, whatever) that did not block to play SC2 and other games (back in the days multiplayer was divinding the keyboard - to two - and much better fun if you ask me)
Re: Keyboard Ghosting Explained
#37Microsoft make some of the best keyboards there are. Just did some tests on my Sidewinder keyboard, no issue at all there.
Microsoft used to make some really good keyboards. But about 8 years ago they started making junk. The last MS keyboard I could actually type on was the Wireless Multimedia one (now discontinued). Keyboards in the last few years have had: - Mushy key feel. I can't tell when I've actually done a keystroke. - Keys that are hard to strike (need to press on them just right, or they hang up or don't register). This is par…
Makes me want to bust out my Northgate keyboard w fn keys on the left and top, two full keypads, Reboot button and detachable coil cable. Weighs almost as much as an IBM kbd.
Re: Keyboard Ghosting Explained
#38I am always amazed that keyboards still do this. We have scanning matrices because back when I was a new engineer pins on a microprocessor were both expensive (larger packages) and they required more gates in the CPU (more expensive CPU) or chip doing the scanning. Today transistors are free and surface mount BGA packages can put down a lot of pads pretty simply[1]. So your typical 104 key keyboard could actually hav…
This is funny because the first keyboard I had, back in the 386 days (1992 I think), didn't had this problem. I remember playing two player games on it without any "ghosting". The keyboard was very solid - hard plastic keys and metal backplate. It was nearly indestructible. Even though new keyboards appeared over time, we still used this one for about 12 years, particularly because that all new keyboards had this ghosting issue. I never understood why. After the 12 years space key began to malfunction a bit and we had to throw it out. It was a sad day for us :(.
Re: Keyboard Ghosting Explained
#39(Unrelated to my other post here...)
Aside from gaming, one application that's hurt by rollover is the open source stenotype program Plover:
I would like to try it, but I tote around a MacBook Pro and I don't care enough about Plover to try to carry a keyboard around and awkwardly put it on top of the built-in keyboard or something. Still, this is one of the few cases where I feel constrained by the unreplaceable hardware.
Re: Keyboard Ghosting Explained
#40I am always amazed that keyboards still do this. We have scanning matrices because back when I was a new engineer pins on a microprocessor were both expensive (larger packages) and they required more gates in the CPU (more expensive CPU) or chip doing the scanning. Today transistors are free and surface mount BGA packages can put down a lot of pads pretty simply[1]. So your typical 104 key keyboard could actually hav…
A serial bus of unique identifier switches (1wire or similar) connecting all the keys with a single loop could be cheaper at scale and solve NKRO. Possibly work on many vastly different (a few buttons to hundreds) product lines with the same ASIC with say only one or two support components per application.