Access-IS AKENOVL find/troubleshooting

[karazi]

I found a beautiful Access-IS AKENOVL 8x10 matrix board at work with plate mounted blacks and some cool trading keys, hanging out in the discarded tech area at my soul-sucking big bank office.  Truly a case of one man's trash is another man's treasure, as I had been wanting a programmable matrix keyboard for a while.  Gave it a nice vacuum and alcohol cleaning when I got home and it's good as new, except for the fact that I can't get it to work.

I plugged it in and windows recognized it and the three LEDs lit up.  I installed the SoftProg software found here and programmed a few keys and downloaded my settings to the keyboard.  I tried some of the keys I set (very basic, just letters and a copy command) and got nothing.  I unplugged/replugged as mfr site suggests and still got nothing.

I tore it down since it is a pretty straightforward construction and everything looked fine, no potential problem spots stood out like spills or anything like that.  Put it back together, tried a few different keyboard IDs USB:MK2 AKENOVL USB 10x8 and USB:MK2 AKENOVL CUSTOM HID (which mfr says requires special drivers - is there a way to check if mine for some reason is Custom HID?) and still nada.

Below are some screenshots of the unit, keycaps/blanks I harvested, and installation screens.  Windows tried installing five different drivers for it, USB Composite Device, and four Custom HID Keypads.  The four Custom HID Keypad drivers eventually turned into USB Input Devices and "successfully" installed as seen in the below screenshots.

According to the website, if it is indeed a HID device then the below applies:

Connects to the PC as a custom USB HID device. This requires special firmware or drivers to read the output from the keyboard.

If anybody has ANY idea how I can get this thing going I would be more than happy to hear about it.  Thanks!

Here is a general link to Access-IS's website.

[Hak Foo]

Maybe check a HID listener utility-- maybe it sends odd codes that normal software ignores without the right driver?

[berserkfan]

All Access-IS should be programmable on their software, including the 'proprietary' ones which merely came preprogrammed for the benefit of the bwankers who think that programming tasks are best left to the 99.9%.

What I suspect you have gotten wrong, is the model name. Open your Softprog software again and scroll down the list of their models. You should see 4 different 8x10 matrix models listed. Two are listed near the top and two you have to scroll down a lot. You have to go through each of them. I went through 3 before getting mine right.

[IvanIvanovich]

Are you on 32bits Windows? That's the only way their crappy programming utility works, no work on x64 Windows.

[berserkfan]

Are you on 32bits Windows? That's the only way their crappy programming utility works, no work on x64 Windows.

For some reason softprog32 works without problems on my 64bit win7. I did not enjoy similar benefits with Tipro and Cherry software.

[karazi]

Thanks all for the great responses.

Maybe check a HID listener utility-- maybe it sends odd codes that normal software ignores without the right driver?

I will definitely look into that, haven't used one of those before though so not sure I'd know what to look for.

All Access-IS should be programmable on their software, including the 'proprietary' ones which merely came preprogrammed for the benefit of the bwankers who think that programming tasks are best left to the 99.9%.

What I suspect you have gotten wrong, is the model name. Open your Softprog software again and scroll down the list of their models. You should see 4 different 8x10 matrix models listed. Two are listed near the top and two you have to scroll down a lot. You have to go through each of them. I went through 3 before getting mine right.

Yeah bankers could care less about tech which is why I ended up with this little guy.  I attached a pic of the model, it is definitely AKENOVL.  I tried the other two 8x10 configs (both AKEOCUL) and got either "This parameter is incorrect" or "The handle is invalid" errors, both of which took a few hundred times pressing OK to clear, which moved the progress bar along, but then nothing happened.  Ugh.

Are you on 32bits Windows? That's the only way their crappy programming utility works, no work on x64 Windows.

I am on 64 bit Win 7...I might have a 32 bit laptop hanging around which I could try it on, though I think it is Win 8.1.  I will check and give it a go in a little bit.  If that works, hopefully I can just program it on 32 bit and use it on my 64 bit machines.

Here is the dialog box that pops up when I upload (seemingly successfully, but not) using the two AKENOVL templates:






Thanks again for all your help.

[berserkfan]

Your keypad is a dif model from mine.


What I have heard is that it is not the version eg win8, but the typi (64 v 32bit) that determines whether a device can function.

[karazi]

Your keypad is a dif model from mine.


What I have heard is that it is not the version eg win8, but the typi (64 v 32bit) that determines whether a device can function.

Thanks, I tried using SoftProg on Win 8.1 32bit and still no dice.  I'll try futzing more tomorrow.

[IvanIvanovich]

I don't remember what model I had but I definitely couldn't get anything to happen with it on x64. It was a PS/2 model, so maybe that is a difference... I don't know. Also, I needed to run it as admin too or it wouldn't actually flash.