NetUSBee on Mega for keyboard alternative?

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

Mega keyboards are rare and expensive. Has anyone gotten around using one with their Mega machines by connectig a NetUSBee with a USB keyboard into their Mega machine? Did it work out OK?

 

Thanks!

[Bee]

I have used a usb keyboard on the netusb.  It was just to test it. If you set it up right it will work.  It was 2 years ago so I don't have specific steps.

 

Thank you

[TGB1718]

Same here, seemed to work ok, so did a mouse

you have to load the appropriate drivers into the AUTO folder

there is a sequence you have to put the files in the AUTO for it to work, but it's explained in the documentation

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

Thanks! This gives me confidence.

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

With Google's help, I found the latest NetUSBee drivers (version 07) and installed them onto a boot floppy according to the documentation. Pretty simple.

 

The keyboard driver said something like it doesn't work with TOS 1.x. I checked the NetUSBee documentation more closely and it says I need TOS 2.

 

At the bottom of .\NETUSB07.ZIP\NETUSB07\DOC\KEYBOARD.TXT 

 

"TOS 2 or higher is required, otherwise an error message will be displayed 
and the driver won't load. FreeMiNT, EmuTOS and MagiC work."

 

Peachy.

 

So there's seemingly no way to get a non-Atari keyboard working on a Mega machine?

 

Help?

 

Thanks!

[snarkdluG]

Eiffel right now or ImpoSTer later.

 

EDIT: I got a Eiffel for 50 euro (located in Sweden).

 

 

Edited September 15, 2022 by snarkdluG

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

Wow, the ImpoSTer looks incredible! I will have to pay attention to that thread.

 

Who/where in Sweden is selling Eiffel? 
 

Thanks!

[snarkdluG]

8 hours ago, 1200XL M.U.L.E. said:

...

Who/where in Sweden is selling Eiffel? 

...

Well, me. I have made a few and are selling them. But I'm not a company and I don't have a site if that is what you are asking? I live in Sweden so the shipping cost will be added on top of the price stated above.

[mikro]

On 9/15/2022 at 5:26 AM, 1200XL M.U.L.E. said:

The keyboard driver said something like it doesn't work with TOS 1.x. I checked the NetUSBee documentation more closely and it says I need TOS 2.

 

At the bottom of .\NETUSB07.ZIP\NETUSB07\DOC\KEYBOARD.TXT 

 

"TOS 2 or higher is required, otherwise an error message will be displayed 
and the driver won't load. FreeMiNT, EmuTOS and MagiC work."

I think this could be a workaround but I didn't try it personally. Guys behind the Lightning USB devices supply it with their products: https://github.com/czietz/keyboard-injector

[UnderTheRain]

I have some Eiffels I made in the UK without the lcd I £34.99 plus postage I can put some on ebay if people need them.

 

UTR

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

15 hours ago, mikro said:

I think this could be a workaround but I didn't try it personally. Guys behind the Lightning USB devices supply it with their products: https://github.com/czietz/keyboard-injector

I gave this a shot but it didn't work. The NetUSBee keyboard driver reported the same message that it doesn't support TOS 1.x. My USB keyboard does not work here.  

1 hour ago, UnderTheRain said:

I have some Eiffels I made in the UK without the lcd I £34.99 plus postage I can put some on ebay if people need them.

 

UTR

I think making these available to the community either through AtariAge or eBay is a great idea.  

[Bee]

fww - Netusb you have to play with the order of the drivers to get things to work.  

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

50 minutes ago, Bee said:

fww - Netusb you have to play with the order of the drivers to get things to work.  

Correct.

 

I understood the instructions to say start with USB.PRG, then whatever drivers you want, and end the sequence with NETUSBEE.PRG.

 

After loading USB.PRG, I load KEYBOARD.PRG first followed by MOUSE.PRG.

[UnderTheRain]

On 9/16/2022 at 11:40 PM, 1200XL M.U.L.E. said:

I gave this a shot but it didn't work. The NetUSBee keyboard driver reported the same message that it doesn't support TOS 1.x. My USB keyboard does not work here.  

I think making these available to the community either through AtariAge or eBay is a great idea.  

Yeah I'll do it this weekend Thursday/Friday I have about 30.

[Tillek]

Ok... so just to put this in here... I just got the USB Keyboard "working" in TOS 1.4 on a Mega 4 ST.  (I had been interested in this since my "bbs" corner has two Megas (and 2 A8s) and it was getting too crowded for 2 ST keyboards (and mouse space).

 

I'm using the drivers located here https://tho-otto.de/snapshots/freemint/usb4tos/ as this all began as playing around with the PicoWifi project (https://github.com/czietz/picowifi)

 

On mine, the error message didn't say anything about needing TOS 2.0, it mentioned needing another program first if used with TOS 1.x

 

So I used the KEYB_INJ.PRG from the Lightning ST disk.  This runs even before USB.PRG (I am not 100% sure it needs to run before USB.PRG, but it DOES have to run before KEYBOARD.PRG).

 

Then I'm running USB.PRG, KEYBOARD.PRG, MOUSE.PRG, STORAGE.PRG, PRINTER.PRG and finally NETUS000.PRG

 

I was able to get the keyboard working.  Also with the mouse.

 

... and now the bad...

 

With the Mega keyboard plugged in, everything works fine... both keyboards seem to work just fine... Mouse works fine.

 

Take the Mega keyboard off.... well... not so fine.  On booting, I'd notice sometimes things were inversed that weren't normally inversed in the HDDriver boot sequence.  Some things started with a letter other than their normal letter (like an A would be a p or something like that, but the rest of it would be fine).  Booting originally kept me in low res (I boot into medium) and running my BBS program just got weird... screen unreadable...  Monochrome (I was in low rez, but there were no colors) no text was readable, it was white on white (the background was black, but the text was inversed, so it looked "redacted" for lack of a better way to describe it).

 

But... when I hit Q on the USB keyboard, it exited to the desktop.  (Now on the desktop, graphics and display seemed fine).

 

Tried running Everest (text editor).... mouse worked fine... nothing happened when I opened a new document and started typing...... (but it had just worked to register me hitting Q to quit the BBS????)

 

In fact, at one point, before giving up, I plugged the Mega keyboard back in (and actually had both keyboards on at that point).  When I hit "Q" (BBS auto boots on that machine) the screen, while still garbled, displayed "Exiting..." correctly, and in the correct color.

 

So I know this isn't overly helpful... but maybe if someone can explain what is going on that the lack of the (proper) keyboard is causing these issues, and maybe find a way to wire up a cheap dongle or something, maybe we're on to something here.

 

 

[Tillek]

@1200XL M.U.L.E. Should also note, I didn't try the keyboard drivers from the NETUSB07 package yet, or any of the stack of other USB keyboards I have laying around, but I figured I'd give you that report so you could maybe get at least that far ahead in your efforts.

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

@Tillek Thanks for the write up! You did some good work there in discovering conflicts and bugs in the drivers. Maybe the fix is simple? Or maybe the drivers were meant to run and tested with a particular setup the coder has.

 

I noticed the directory name for the drivers is "FreeMint". Maybe they're not 100% compatible with old school TOS?

[Tillek]

Well, it's the FreeMint site, but it's also the USB4TOS so...... ?

 

I was having similar issues making a switchbox.  I used a 6 connector phone cable switchbox to try to make a keyboard switch for the Megas... but alas, whenever I tried to switch the box, that machine worked, but the machine no longer connected would have random characters "entered". 

 

For >MY< needs, being able to make a keyboard switch would be good enough... I have room for ONE keyboard/mouse, not one for each Mega.  But either way, it's been a bad experiment.

 

Starting to think I need to look at new desks to solve my problem... Hope you have better luck.

 

 

But that said though... depending on what you're doing with the ST.... maybe it will work ok for your needs.

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

I tried the USB4TOS drivers you mentioned above, and it mostly works!  

 

Here is the complete order of my drivers. Everything.

 

TOS14FX92

POOLFX92

CACHE90

FOLDER400

JAR40

KEYB_INJ

USB

KEYBOARD

MOUSE

NETUSB000

 

This sequence boots >90% of the time. Sometimes I get two bombs when loading the USB driver. Other times the computer resets and reboots itself. Once or twice I think everything will load successfully but when I get to the desktop I see a string of bombs.

 

After a successful boot I loaded STENO and tested the keys. I seem to have basic keyboard functionality! It seems pressing the Print Screen, Scroll Lock, and Pause keys sometimes locks up my machine.

 

I was surprised to see these drivers are almost identical to the NetUSBee drivers. 

 

I was posting some Coremark performance figures in another thread of mine where I ask about two add-on boards in my Mega 4. I ran the Coremark test again with all this stack of drivers and I see another performance hit.

 

 

No drivers of any kind give a score of 6.07 and these drivers lower the score to 5.76.

 

Thanks for referencing that USB package! I wish I knew what the other drivers in that package are for, like Blitz and all. Is there any documentation on this package?

 

It's about 10:30pm here and I'm thinking this is a great way to end the day.  

[Tillek]

I'm not running the TOS14FX at all... I'm running PoolFix4.  Not running Cache/Folder/Jar... Have a couple modem related things.  Might play around a bit Friday/Over the weekend (have a late night working tonight so probably won't get a chance to try).

 

When it did work, did you notice any graphical glitches? (Like the inverse text where it shouldn't be and all that?)

 

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

I did not notice any graphical glitches in my limited testing. My hope is to play around with this package more over the weekend. I'll let you know what I find.

 

One of my concerns would be how well these drivers play on my specific Mega 4 with all the acceleration boards. I will be sure to experiment at 8 MHz.

[Tillek]

30 minutes ago, 1200XL M.U.L.E. said:

I did not notice any graphical glitches in my limited testing. My hope is to play around with this package more over the weekend. I'll let you know what I find.

 

One of my concerns would be how well these drivers play on my specific Mega 4 with all the acceleration boards. I will be sure to experiment at 8 MHz.

Well, in my testing it was so "in your face" you couldn't possibly miss it.... and while the specific glitches were not consistent, the presence of glitches was very consistent... So it might not have been the same thing every time, but there was always something.

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

@Tillek I tried testing my Mega 4 with the NetUSBee and a keyboard. Emphasis is placed on tried because I wasn't very successful. My Mega 4 crashed a lot and showing those beautiful TOS bombs. Sometimes the machine would reset and I couldn't count how many. Other times it would simply freeze and I could see the total. I saw anywhere from 2 to 8+ bombs. 

 

I would load bigger applications like the LDW spreadsheet program and try creating a dummy sheet with silly compounding calculations and also try simple things like customizing the desktop. 

 

One time the machine froze so hard that pressing the reset button did nothing. The screen was dark and the floppy drive wouldn't spin. I thought I must have overloaded the cartridge circuit with the NetUSBee + USB mouse and keyboard. The solution was to turn off the power supply and let the computer sit for a while. Some voltage needed to discharge, I suppose.

 

No graphical glitches while it worked. It just didn't work for very long at any given time.

 

Sorry for the poor results. I was hoping to give a happier report.