Another Unicomp (BOSCOM) 122

[Shawn Stanford]

Just got it a couple days ago to replace the Model M on my desk at work. Since I'm an old COBOL programmer working in a mainframe shop, my geek cred went pretty much through the roof when I showed off this Bad Boy. Ha ha!

That being said, the cursor and paging keys are in a different layout from the Model M, which is causing me some confusion (I'm a touch typist). I'd like to at least redefine the paging keys, but I don't think it's going to be possible; since the keyboard actually sends signals that mimic other keys. For instance, pressing the dedicated Backtab key sends a Shift, then a Tab to the PC. Frustrating!

The Model M keycaps are a direct swap, but does anyone know if the keycaps from the similarly laid-out 3270 keyboards will swap onto this keyboard?

[bigpook]

pics?

[Shawn Stanford]

[o2dazone]

v retro, I am loving the beige keys above the arrows

[Shawn Stanford]

v retro, I am loving the beige keys above the arrows

The 'Delete' key was missing when I got the board, so I replaced the entire block with the appropriate keycaps from a dead Model M.

[iMav]

The 'Delete' key was missing when I got the board, so I replaced the entire block with the appropriate keycaps from a dead Model M.

Make sure you get Unicomp to send you a replacement Del key.

Welcome to geekhack!

[Shawn Stanford]

If you get a chance please take a pic straight down showing the key layout a little better. I was thinking of buying one to mainly harvest the keys. Isn't this made by Unicomp?

The original layout is unknown, since I pulled the keycaps on the left side without thinking to record the positions as I found them. I couldn't say if Unicomp made these for BOSCOM or if Unicomp bought the tooling or what the corporate/manufacturing relationship might be.

I saw a post (I believe by you) regarding these in another thread and, yes, it does have the little shiny flecks in the keycaps.

FWIW: This is my first thread in this forum. I've been a mainframe programmer (with some diversions into minis (Series/1) and micros) for almost thirty years. I found geekhack a couple weeks ago while trying to determine if the classic 3178 keyboard could be easily hacked onto a PC (apparently: no). I've been stubbornly hanging on to a PS/2 Model M keyboard for years since the company replaced my IBM with a series of Dells.

[D-EJ915]

I posted some pics of mine elsewhere around here

[lowpoly]

3178: Check kbdbable.org for converters.

As for the Boscom, I just got three of these in german layout. If you can't find D-EJ915's pics I can take one.

[Shawn Stanford]

3178: Check kbdbable.org for converters.

I found that site about the same time I found this one. It looks like a great site, but unfortunately, I'm a software guy; I need an off-the-shelf plug-and-play solution...

[Russ]

There is another 122-key keyboard OEMed from Unicomp specifically for 3270 guys like yourself, complete with all 3270 keycaps.

It's from Affirmative Computer Products.  See it at the following URL:

http://www.twindata.com/affirmative/5250k.html

Same "clickey" keyboard, same price.

Russ

[wheel83]

i dont have any clue what you are talking about, but great first post! i think that should help the op.

[lowpoly]

The guy I got mine from has 20 more but some sales pending. I'll ask him how much he wants. These have german layout, no rule key unfortunately.

[Shawn Stanford]

I'm trying to justify in my mind paying $20 plus shipping just to get a "Rule Home" key.

Is it just the pictures or do the Boscoms have keys with non-uniform colors here and there?

Send me your address and I'll send you the 'Rule Home' key off this one for free. As I said: I'm an old mainframe guy, so the AS/400 keys have no special appeal for me.

Except for the six keys above the cursor keys that I replaced, the keys seem to be a uniform grey with little sparkles.

[itlnstln]

PMing you now.
 
But I'm insisting on Paypal'ing you $7 for a drink on me. Men in uniform and all. :usa2:

Damn, you drink at the expensive places.  You're a baller, ripster.

[Shawn Stanford]

What if the Cocktail waitress is cute and he wants to
tip!

Actually, a double Jim Beam on the rocks runs $6 at the place I frequent, and the new bartender is a hottie...

[itlnstln]

Well, I should send you $10 so you make an impression.
 
Don't tell her the whole Geekhack backstory thing - she'll back away so fast she'll knock a few bottles off the shelf.
 
Unless keyboard aficionados work at bars that is. Someone around here does I think.

I have barely mentioned GeekHack to my girlfriend (hopefully, I'll have some pics to share of us voluteering at KLRN, our local PBS station).  I have mentioned in a little (and I mean little) more detail my affinity for quality keyboards, but I don't get into too much detail about it.  Some things need their time to develop.

[itlnstln]

"Why dear, I'm a Buckling Spring type of guy. Look at my Strong Fingers!! Why, you look a little tense and maybe a nice back massage will help."

Wow, this hits a little close to home.  I never would have thought typing would have helped with something like this.  She does like my strong hands/fingers for...  uhh... back massages.
 
To be honest, I did play a lot of baseball when i was younger and I play disc golf these days, so I do get more finger excercise than just typing. The rest of my comment still stands.

[Shawn Stanford]

Ah, I remember the single life!  Now I'm married and sneak UPS boxes down to the basement office.

As a gamer, my wife has been through more than her share of keyboards and pointing devices. She understands my desire for a 'right' keyboard, although she disagrees as to what 'right' is.  :lol:

[ironcoder]

while trying to determine if the classic 3178 keyboard could be easily hacked onto a PC (apparently: no). I've been stubbornly hanging on to a PS/2 Model M keyboard for years since the company replaced my IBM with a series of Dells.

I assume you're running Windows? Are you trying to use the 3178 board with the PC by itself, or to get to a host? Most of the 3270 emulators I'm familiar with let you remap the keyboard completely so I'm guessing you are talking about using your kb natively on your PC.

[Shawn Stanford]

I assume you're running Windows? Are you trying to use the 3178 board with the PC by itself, or to get to a host? Most of the 3270 emulators I'm familiar with let you remap the keyboard completely so I'm guessing you are talking about using your kb natively on your PC.

Yeah, both using it with Windows and with a 3270 terminal emulation program. The PFkeys work appropriately in the emulator, giving PF1 through PF24. The problem is that the emulator doesn't recognize anything except a standard PC keyboard.  A second problem being that I don't have some of the unique terminal keycaps, since this is an AS/400 keyboard.

[ironcoder]

Which emulator are you using?

[Shawn Stanford]

Powerterm Pro Enterprise, although I'm open to suggestions...

[itlnstln]

Powerterm Pro Enterprise, although I'm open to suggestions...

Powerterm is one of my favs.  I also use wc3270.  It's free, but not near as full featured as Powerterm.  I use it when I need something down and dirty at work.

[Shawn Stanford]

I find Powerterm to be a little obtrusive; I don't really need a 'full featured' emulator. That being said, it's fine except for one very annoying habit: it won't keep track of my toolbar preferences. This may be a problem with my installation (it's corporate), but it's a pain; every morning when I boot my machine and start Powerterm, I have to shut off all the toolbars again. Argh...

[ironcoder]

I don't know if they will do it for sure, but I like Vista by Tom Brennan, and Attachmate Extra and Irma. Don't know if the last 2 are still sold. Vista has a picture of your keyboard and you can easily remap whatever you want. I think there is a free trial on it. http://www.tombrennansoftware.com/ A screenshot of the keyboard edit is here: http://www.tombrennansoftware.com/keyedit.html

On NIX there is a great one x3270. The Win version itlnstln mentioned is featureless compared to the  NIX version in the same package. On the NIX version you can customize it unbelievably. I use it on the TK3 MVS 3.8 system as well as for work. When you use it as a console the letters fly up just like on a real console. It's a hoot.

[Shawn Stanford]

I don't know if they will do it for sure, but I like Vista by Tom Brennan,

I've used Vista, and it was great. But, it wasn't enough better than Powerterm that I wanted to spend the money. At any rate, Vista doesn't support a 122-key keyboard.

I haven't used Irma since the days of the PCOX board. Did they ever show her face..?

[ironcoder]

If you get a chance then bring up a Linux or BSD box and try x3270. One of the things I love about it aside from the authentic "green screen" look complete with IBM fonts (it is an IBM-released-to-the-wild product, I believe) is it has a trace function that shows you the keycode for every key you press. You can take that info and customize your keyboard setup to do anything you want. You should be able to make it work like you want with any keyboard.

[Shawn Stanford]

Well, I tried to get ahold of the drivers for this keyboard so that Windows would recognize it as a 122 key setup, but no luck. The drivers I found never did load properly. However, I resolved the primary issue I had with KeyTweak and AutoHotKey.

Briefly, the six keys over the arrow pad are (Left to Right, Top to Bottom):
Backtab, Page Up, Page Down; End, Insert, Delete.

Where a standard keyboard is:
Insert, Home, Page Up; Delete, End, Page Down

Obviously, this was causing me a great deal of heartache.

It was easy enough to redefine five of the keys, simple substitution with KeyTweak gave me:
Page Up::Home
Page Down::Page Up
End::Delete
Insert::End
Delete::Page Down

Since I don't use the numeric keypad, this worked fine except for redefining the Backtab as Insert. I initially tried Tab::Insert, but that obviously affected the left-side Tab key.

Someone here suggested AHK, and with that I found that the Backtab key actually sent {Shift}{Tab}. A little deeper digging showed that it was sending {Shift Down}{Tab Down}{Tab Up}{Shift Up}, and that the elapsed time on the Tab Down was 2 milliseconds. Pushing the Tab key myself, I found that my elapsed time was several times that, even when I hit it as fast as I could.

So, I've hacked an AHK script that gives me most of the Insert key functionality while retaining most of the Tab key functionality:

Code: [Select]


*Tab:: StartTime := A_TickCount

*Tab Up::
ElapsedTime := A_TickCount - StartTime
If GetKeyState(&quot;Shift&quot;) & (ElapsedTime < 20)
Send {Insert}
else send {Blind}{Tab}
return


I say it 'mostly' works because Windows won't recognize Shift-Insert, Ctrl-Insert as cut and paste (I know there are corresponding alphanumeric sequences, I just have to learn them) and I've lost the repeat on the Tab key, although it does a stroke-by-stroke Tab and Backtab just fine.

So, there it is. Anyone have any insights into what I've done or improvements I can make?

Thanks In Advance...

[huha]

I got two of them today.
Build quality seems to be Unicomp-ish, but I have the feeling it's lighter than my Endurapro and less loud as well. Does anyone share my sentiment?

The layout is a bit confusing, I'll see if I can get used to it; I most likely won't use it as my daily driver though, as it doesn't have an integrated pointing device, which I have gotten used to using (it's just so incredibly practical).


Does anyone know how to actually use the bloody thing? How can I, for example, get Numlock? It's printed on a key, but this particular key activates ScrollLock when pressed.
Is there any explanation of what each key does? (Or at least is supposed to, as this clearly is a terminal emulator keyboard. It would be interesting though)

-huha

[Shawn Stanford]

I received a call yesterday from someone at TwinData.com. He explained that the reason the driver won't work with this particular model is because it's intended to be a driverless keyboard. Unicomp sells a 'diverfull' model and - oddly - the drivers are an extra cost. However, that model would completely solve the 122-key pretending to be a 101-key problem. He offered me a good deal, including a trade-in on this keyboard, but I think I'll stick with what I've got for now.

As far as what the keys on this keyboard originall did: it was intended for an IBM AS/400 minicomputer. I've haven't spent enough time with AS/400s to know much about them, but that's where I'd start looking if I was curious enough about it.

[huha]

How did you get the keypresses the keyboard sends when pressing a button?

Redefining some of them would be quite a nice thing to do.

-huha

[Shawn Stanford]

AutoHotKey runs a default script when it is loaded. One of the options of AHK while it is running is to show the last batch of activity from the keyboard. It's very detailed.

[wellington1869]

AutoHotKey runs a default script when it is loaded. One of the options of AHK while it is running is to show the last batch of activity from the keyboard. It's very detailed.

right click the ahk icon in the system tray, select Open.
View>key history and script info.
F5 to refresh

[huha]

Nice, I'll try that out when I reassemble the keyboard in the next days. At the moment stems and caps are either drying or sitting in soapy water overnight.

-huha

[Shawn Stanford]

Nice, I'll try that out when I reassemble the keyboard in the next days. At the moment stems and caps are either drying or sitting in soapy water overnight. -huha

I put mine in a colander, bungie a lid onto it and run it through the dishwasher. :smile:

[itlnstln]

I put mine in a colander, bungie a lid onto it and run it through the dishwasher. :smile:

Strong.  I like that.

[huha]

I put mine in a colander, bungie a lid onto it and run it through the dishwasher. :smile:

I don't have a dishwasher, so that's not an option.:ohwell:

-huha

[itlnstln]

I don't have a dishwasher, so that's not an option.:ohwell:
 
-huha

What, you're not married?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
(JK; I do the dishes around my place)

[Red October]

So does anyone with one of these have issues with the Keypad splat ("*") not sending a scancode, along with the "Setup" key on the keypad as well?  Perhaps I need to ditch the 122-key driver that I installed when I got the thing...?

[Shawn Stanford]

I got the following with those keys:

Code: [Select]


DC  02B d 1.53 \              
DC  02B u 0.09 \              
6A  037 d 0.97 Num *          
6A  037 u 0.14 Num *


[Red October]

I got rid of the drivers.  The numpad splat now types a splat * (imagine that!), setup doesn't do anything obvious, and still doesn't send a scancode.  I suppose I might write Unicomp about this.  Nothing else has changed as far as I can tell.

[mgr1969]

This might be off the topic a bit, but is there an EASY way to map the function keys on the left to open up applications in XP?  I'm totally addicted to Model M's but have thought about getting a 122-key if I could map those keys to things like Excel, Opera, Slacker, My Documents, etc...  there has to be a key re-mapping app out there somewhere. I don't use any terminal emulator, I just think the 122 is geek-chic if I can make it work the way I want.  

ClickyKeyboards has clear key-caps http://www.clickykeyboards.com/index.cfm/fa/items.main/parentcat/12151/subcatid/0/id/164234 so I could put my own labels underneath but they're pretty pricy.  Any sources for those things?  I've tried and failed.

Oh, and I just joined Geekhack because every time I google for something I end up here reading about it.

[Shawn Stanford]

The keys on the left do map out, some in strange ways, others as standards keys. For instance, the three bottom most in the right hand column map as function keys (F1, F3, F5, IIRC). I'd love to let you know what they are, but that keyboard sits on my desk at work, and I'm on vacation for a few days. If you send me a PM in about a week, I'll poll them when I get back

[Red October]

I have the scancodes for all the irregular keys on the BOSCOM keyboard.  These may differ from unbranded Unicomps or other types of 122-key keyboards or other layouts.  (IBM made their own PC compatible boards, which are startlingly rare, Nokia and Telex made others and certainly countless others exist in this style as it has been a niche since the first IBM PCs started appearing on the desks of those who had had a terminal there before and found a PC useful instead but still needed to talk to the mainframe).  The two-wakas key sends scancode 56, apparently it is common to have a blank key here (right of Lshift) to send this scancode, for what purpose I am not sure at all.
The leftmost row is all normal keys like Escape, Pause, System Request, Start, and the menu key, labeled "Start" and "Apps" in text and completely innofensive!  On my example for no good reason the keycaps were reversed when I got it (so pressing "Apps" brought up the Start menu and pressing "Start" opened the context menu.  Yay.)  The row (column actually) immediately in from this has the following keys:
Clear: sends E11D and 45: Japanese Pause+NumLock, does not cycle NumLock, functions as "Pause" in practice, which basically means you can use it to Pause "DooM", which, I should mention, is an experience on this board because of the arrow keys.  Now I used to play on an AnyKey, which had the +-shaped arrows (And directly addressable diagonal movements!) so I am at an advantage here, but it was slow to return at first.
ErInp (That's "Erase Input"): sends E02A and E04F: Fake Lshift+GreyEnd, functions as an "End" in practice.  
Help: Sends 38 and 3B: ALT+F1, does little in practice, unfortunately does not call up "help".
Play: Sends 38 and 3F: ALT+F5, again does nothing.
Record: Sends 38 and 3D= ALT+F3, another key that does nothing.  Because of the dual scancodes, I had trouble trying to remap these with AutoHotKey, but I was not able to enter correct syntax for these keys.  If anyone has experience with the programme, please let me know how to make it take input from them.

The full set of function keys sends the usual scancodes up through 12, after which point it starts sending a shifted version of the scancode of the function key 12 lower than it, i.e. F14 sends Shift+F2.  Again, as double scancodes, I couldn't get AutoHotKey to do anything with these, but I'm sure that's because I have no experience with it, not because of some failing on its part.

[Shawn Stanford]

Here is what AHK gave me for the leftmost set of keys (top to bottom, left to right):

Code: [Select]


1B  001 d 1113.31 Esc            
1B  001 u 0.11 Esc            
13  045 d 5.36 Pause          
13  045 u 0.02 Pause          
2C  137 d 2.89 Prnt Scrn      
2C  137 u 0.13 Prnt Scrn      
5B  15B d 1.11 Left Windows  
5B  15B u 0.13 Left Windows  
5D  15D d 1.81 Application    
5D  15D u 0.14 Application    
13  045 d 2.66 Pause          
13  045 u 0.00 Pause          
2E  153 d 1.09 Delete        
2E  153 u 0.14 Delete        
A4  038 d 0.44 Alt            
70  03B d 0.00 F1            
70  03B u 0.02 F1            
A4  038 u 0.00 Alt            
A4  038 d 0.55 Alt            
74  03F d 0.00 F5            
74  03F u 0.02 F5            
A4  038 u 0.00 Alt            
A4  038 d 0.45 Alt            
72  03D d 0.02 F3            
72  03D u 0.00 F3            
A4  038 u 0.02 Alt            
74  03F d 1.20 F5            
74  03F u 0.11 F5