problems with microsoft natural ergonomic keyboard 4000

Message

netjiro · Post by **netjiro** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 4:26 pm

Hi

My old ergo kbs were old and dying so I went out and bought a new spanking M$ ergo 4000.

The problem is:
function keys F3-F12, special function keys 2-5, and all special keys to the right of them
Those keys don't even fire keycodes

I used xev to check the keycodes of the keyboard since it was behaving strangely, and the mentioned keys don't register any events at all.
Is this some weird microsoft special, or broken KB?
Any suggestions?

Thanks
NJ

didymos · Post by **didymos** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 4:08 am

Have you tried changing the keymap settings in the xorg config file? I know that you can specify extra bindings for otherwise default keymaps.

Thomas S. Howard

netjiro · Post by **netjiro** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 8:35 am

That would have been nice, but the problem is that some keys don't send keycodes at all when pressed, which means that I cannot assign them using a keymap since that maps keycodes to keysyms.

I have however tried the keyboard in a winxp install, and installed all the drivers, and it still behaves rather weird. The "dead" keys (without keycodes) come to life, but send mixed garbage of for example: F9 sends something like ctrl+F7 !
Nice.

And it doesn't work at all in either the windows boot menu or grub boot menu.

I'm returning the keyboard.

Spearhead · Post by **Spearhead** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 11:18 am

netjiro wrote:That would have been nice, but the problem is that some keys don't send keycodes at all when pressed, which means that I cannot assign them using a keymap since that maps keycodes to keysyms.

I have however tried the keyboard in a winxp install, and installed all the drivers, and it still behaves rather weird. The "dead" keys (without keycodes) come to life, but send mixed garbage of for example: F9 sends something like ctrl+F7 !
Nice.

And it doesn't work at all in either the windows boot menu or grub boot menu.

I'm returning the keyboard.

You did check if the function-lock is enabled, i hope?

And as for the boot menu, do you have the keyboard attached via USB or PS/2 with a converter?
If USB, did you enable USB Legacy Support in your BIOS?

netjiro · Post by **netjiro** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 12:43 pm

LOL, the first things that goes blind...

Well, unfortunately the function lock only helped with F3-5 which were out before, and with the right-most special keys. The F6-12 and the 1-5 special keys are still not working at all. I also tried it in on a windoze again, and the F6-12 are kaputt in windows as well regardless of function lock.

I have USB legacy support enabled in the bios, and the keyboard connected through USB. When plugging it through a PS2 converter it doesn't want to talk at all.

Too bad, unfortunately, because I really liked the layout and feel of this kb. I hope I get a replacement that works.

Thanks for the help anyhow

NJ

muhr · Post by **muhr** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 12:59 pm

Hello

I've bougth one of these, too. I have no problems with the F-keys. I can use with Grub when booting with no problems as well.

The 1-5 special keys don't work (as don't the Favorites and Calculator keys and the zoom-wheel), however. I don't know how to activate them.

BTW: Did you see that there are 2 evdev interfaces that belong to this keyboard?

-- muhr

netjiro · Post by **netjiro** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 1:50 pm

Glad to hear it's working for you, that gives me a bit more hope on resolving this with a replacement board.
I don't really need the special keys or zoom thingie, just the rest of the F keys.

Yes I noticed the two different devices from dmesg. I assume one is the general keyboard functions and one is the zoom thingie, and perhaps some of the otherwise not working special keys, as you said 1-5 and calculator. But I'm just guessing, and I haven't had time to look into it.

NJ

hobbes27 · Post by **hobbes27** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 9:37 am

muhr wrote: I've bougth one of these, too. I have no problems with the F-keys. I can use with Grub when booting with no problems as well.
The 1-5 special keys don't work (as don't the Favorites and Calculator keys and the zoom-wheel), however. I don't know how to activate them.
BTW: Did you see that there are 2 evdev interfaces that belong to this keyboard?
-- muhr

I just ordered that keyboard. Is there a howto available to get that thing running with gentoo?

regards,
hobbes

netjiro · Post by **netjiro** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:55 am

I got a replacement for my broken board. It works fine. Sorry that I forgot to post back to the forum.
The keys go a bit stiff, or loose the preassure sensitivity "equal distribution" depending on where on the key you press. Most other kbs don't but I've found that many M$ boards do, unfortunately. I.E. after a while some keys tend to get an odd feeling, being harder to press if you don't press dead center on them. My other el-cheapo boards never develop this malady, but all the M$ boards I've tried have done so after a few months+.
Otherwise it is a nice board with excellent hand rests and a good layout, although it requires somewhat larger hands than most other broken ergo boards I have.

Harebrafolk
Jimmy

lohner · Post by **lohner** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 3:45 pm

I have the same problem, others too (here for example), but there's a kernel patch already!
here's the description of the problem
that's the solution, a kernel driver
to get it to work, you also need to patch your usb-input kernel driver and others with this
called HID simple driver interface

now, if only somebody could tell me why I can't patch the suspend2-sources verison 2.6.15-suspend2-r8 with

Code: Select all

patch -p1 < [one of the two patches above]

?

(yes, I am in /usr/src/linux and I saved the patches from the right beginning to the end to two separate files in that dir)

an error message is, for example:

Code: Select all

patching file drivers/usb/input/Kconfig
patch: **** malformed patch at line 9: To compile this driver as a module, choose M here: the

and if I try to fix that one, the next error comes along - it seems like this is a wrong file format for patch

So I don't know what to do with these patch files (if they are patch files at all).
Is it just me or do I have to use methods other than patch?

licked · Post by **licked** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 10:08 pm

I tried the above patch too and had similar results, _except_ the paren keys over the numpad began to work, after I manually patched everything.

I was hoping 2.6.17 would make the keys work, but I'm runnig -rc2 with no joy and I'm assuming no new stuff from here in.

I really want the zoom key for controlling my mythtv volume!

chrisashton84 · Post by **chrisashton84** » Wed May 24, 2006 12:05 am

One thing I didn't see mentioned (or missed) was the numpad itself - I can't get the numlock button to actually do anything (in linux). The LED turns on / off, but the keys never act as numbers, always arrows, home, etc. I assume this is working fine for you guys? (I haven't patched the kernel yet).

licked · Post by **licked** » Wed May 24, 2006 1:27 am

In all my research I've seen mention of this before as a defect. Seems to be somewhat common. Exchange it.

chrisashton84 · Post by **chrisashton84** » Fri May 26, 2006 1:05 am

You had me worried (it's an online purchase... dont' know if newegg could help since it's been a month or so since i got it) but the numpad works perfectly in windows, even w/o the driver installed. In linux it does send the numlock keycode so I'm not sure what's up. BTW I'm using microsoftprousb as XkbModel, in xgl, and don't know what all this might affect. As another oddity (besides the other non-working keys other people have mentioned) in the last couple of boots it's started treating Ctrl as Ctrl+Win, unless another modifier is pressed, in which case it acts normally.

BTW, how difficult is it to patch the gentoo sources with that patch?

lohner · Post by **lohner** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 1:03 pm

No problems here except for the already mentioned non-working keys.
I compiled the USB stuff in the kernel - no modules:

Code: Select all

<*> Support for Host-side USB 

--- USB Input Devices
<*> USB Human Interface Device (full HID) support
[*]   HID input layer support
[ ]   /dev/hiddev raw HID device support

As for Xgl and the XkbModel I don't really know if that's a problem. I use X.org 7 and the config looks like this:

Code: Select all

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Keyboard0"
        Driver      "keyboard"
        Option      "XkbRules" "xorg"
        Option      "XkbLayout" "de"
        Option      "XkbModel" "microsoftprooem"
EndSection

I did not patch anything because there seems to be something wrong with the file format of the patch files
and after an hour of playing around with the kernel source code exchanging the
necassary parts I gave up due to lack of success.
And as licked wrote, if you do it by hand, it does not make everything work.

I'm still waiting for a change in the USB subsystem of the vanilla kernel...

sir_tez · Post by **sir_tez** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 7:58 pm

Ouch! I just ordered this keyboard as well....

sir_tez · Post by **sir_tez** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 5:41 am

I replaced my old beige Microsoft Natural (v 2.0, I think with the diamond shaped arrow key configuration). After restarting the computer, everything worked fine... I can use F6 and F7 just fine.... don't know any proper programs to use all the rest of the keys on but I may post again to let you know. So far, so good.

sir_tez · Post by **sir_tez** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:53 pm

I'm using the standard x.org 7.0 drivers not evdev

Section "InputDevice"

Identifier "Keyboard1"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "microsoft"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
Option "XkbVariant" ""

EndSection

PowerOfAzure · Post by **PowerOfAzure** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:55 am

I just looked at dmesg, and it says that keycode.c cannot emulate rawmode for keycode 240
I took a look at keyboard.c (a copy of, i've done enough programming and library editing to know you never EVER change the orig) and found where this error/warning occurs

Code: Select all

if ((raw_mode = (kbd->kbdmode == VC_RAW)) && !hw_raw)
		if (emulate_raw(vc, keycode, !down << 7))
			if (keycode < BTN_MISC)
				printk(KERN_WARNING "keyboard.c: can't emulate rawmode for keycode %d\n", keycode);

Now, i don't know a lot of C (C++ and Java are my languages of choice), but I do know that probably, w/ enough time, I could figure out what everything means and what it does, since the languages are somewhat similar, and the logic is the same. Is there anyone who is very good at C who could look at that and possibly tell how to edit it to make the rawmode emulation for these keys work? I'm going to work at it, but it would probably take a while. Also, do you think that that would break the Gentoo install???

powerman · Post by **powerman** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 1:10 am

lohner wrote:So I don't know what to do with these patch files (if they are patch files at all). Is it just me or do I have to use methods other than patch?

In LKML there was posted two different patches for this keyboard. Patch you choose is too big, complex and strange - second patch looks much cleaner.

I've updated second patch for: 2.6.14-hardened-r8 kernel; make custom 1-5 keys above "MyFavorites" working; replace F-Lock + F1-F12 keys scancodes by usual F1-F12 scancodes, so now F-Lock state doesn't change anything. My patch is here: http://powerman.asdfgroup.com/patches.html.

PowerOfAzure · Post by **PowerOfAzure** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 5:13 am

umm, how do I use these patches? I've never patched the kernel, and I would really like to get my kb working

powerman · Post by **powerman** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 11:09 am

Patching kernel isn't Gentoo-specific task, so you can found a lot of information about it anythere in internet. In short:

Code: Select all

cd /usr/src/linux
patch -p1 </path/where/you/saved/nek4k.patch

If you using different kernel than me, then you better run patch with "--dry-run" param first in addition to "-p1" - this make patch program doesn't change files on hard drive and just print information about which files and how will be changed. If there will be no lines like "Hunk #1 FAILED at 58", you can apply patch without
--dry-run.

After patching kernel you should compile and install it as usually: make && make install or using genkernel.

PowerOfAzure · Post by **PowerOfAzure** » Mon Jul 10, 2006 12:43 am

Is there a way to edit the patch to make it work w/ the gentoo-sources kernel (2.6.16-gentoo-r9)?
Also, is there a way to remove the patch? I accentally didn't use dry-run on one of my attempts, and I was getting errors. (HUNK 3 failed at 446)

powerman · Post by **powerman** » Mon Jul 10, 2006 10:13 am

PowerOfAzure wrote:Is there a way to edit the patch to make it work w/ the gentoo-sources kernel (2.6.16-gentoo-r9)?

Yeah... you can open patch in editor in one window, open corresponding kernel source file(s) in editor in second window and do manual search&replace for each chunk of code. This require understanding of patch/diff file format, but it's ease. Then, if you make backup of edited files before start changing them, you can run:

Code: Select all

diff -uNr linux-orig/ linux/ > nek4k-2.6.16.patch

and post it somethere as your contribution to open source world.

PowerOfAzure wrote:Also, is there a way to remove the patch? I accentally didn't use dry-run on one of my attempts, and I was getting errors. (HUNK 3 failed at 446)

To remove add -R option:

Code: Select all

patch -p1 -R </path/where/you/saved/nek4k.patch

and delete all *.rej files created by patch. Also you can re-emerge kernel sources.

powerman · Post by **powerman** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 8:07 pm

2.6.16-hardened-r10 become stable, so I've updated my patch for this kernel. You can download it from http://powerman.asdfgroup.com/patches.html

problems with microsoft natural ergonomic keyboard 4000

problems with microsoft natural ergonomic keyboard 4000

got a replacement, works ok

Anyone gotten the zoom/fave/1-5 keys working