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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: nowsharing on Fri, 28 May 2010, 14:47:49

Title: Serial numpad in Vista?
Post by: nowsharing on Fri, 28 May 2010, 14:47:49

My RS232 serial bracket finally arrived, and I was expecting to be able to just plug it in to my motherboard and connect my Genovation 623-21 serial number pad, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I only get a blinking numlock light on it during startup.

Does anyone have experience with this?

Title: Serial numpad in Vista?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Fri, 28 May 2010, 15:14:47

Try it in windows 98 to see if you get any better results.

Title: Serial numpad in Vista?
Post by: ch_123 on Fri, 28 May 2010, 15:30:25

Damn, I never would have thought of that course of action...

Title: Serial numpad in Vista?
Post by: quadibloc on Fri, 28 May 2010, 15:41:58

I do remember that Microsoft removed an accessibility feature that let you plug a terminal into your computer's serial port, and use that instead of a keyboard. I think they may have been concerned that this was allowing computers to be accessed in a networked fashion for which they wanted to charge extra.

Title: Serial numpad in Vista?
Post by: nowsharing on Fri, 28 May 2010, 15:41:59

Quote

Try it in windows 98 to see if you get any better results.

It doesn't work in Ubuntu either, so I'm starting to doubt the OS as the source of my problem.

Title: Serial numpad in Vista?
Post by: ch_123 on Fri, 28 May 2010, 15:44:16

Was there any sort of software that accompanied the numpad?

Title: Serial numpad in Vista?
Post by: nowsharing on Fri, 28 May 2010, 15:53:21

Good suggestion, I hadn't considered the serial devices need software to operate. I'm getting some strange results from genovation's Keydriver 1.04 program.

If I convert the keystrokes to Macros they work, but send to many keypresses. For example pressing 1 results in 111. I'll mess with this a little and see if I can make it work.

Title: Serial numpad in Vista?
Post by: nowsharing on Fri, 28 May 2010, 15:58:30

Got it! Thanks for putting me on the right track ch_123.

Title: Serial numpad in Vista?
Post by: nowsharing on Fri, 28 May 2010, 16:05:21

It works with my USB to Serial adapter now too.

Title: Serial numpad in Vista?
Post by: ch_123 on Fri, 28 May 2010, 16:07:59

Catastrophe averted.

It's because the background colour of the boot screen is kinda lavender, isn't it?