John, (01)
I'm following up with you about a quote for the NRE and production
costs to create a new batch of keysets. Will you be able to get us
something this week? (02)
At 04:08 PM 2/12/2006, Philip Gust wrote:
>At 03:11 PM 2/12/2006, John Sechrest wrote:
>
>
>>Philip Gust <gust@NouveauSystems.com> writes:
>>
>> % > One of the places we got stuck was the need for a driver to
>> % > coordinate the 5 bits from one keyboard with the 3 bits of the mouse.
>> % > That was something that we did not process very well.
>>
>> % I'm a little confused by it myself. We wrote some specialized Java
>> % code that processed input from the keyset, and allowed Java to
>> % perform its normal mouse handling. I imagine that the same would be
>> % done for any other programming language. It's not clear what the
>> % advantage would be of combining keyboard and mouse handling into a
>> % single driver, especially in a windowed environment.
>>
>> Appearently NLS used the three mouse keys as modifiers,
>> so you could get 8 states from the right hand to modify
>> key stroke on the left hand...
>>
>> so if you have
>>
>> 10110 000
>> 10110 100
>> 10110 010
>> 10110 001
>>
>> The the five keys on the left are generating different keys based
>> on the keys on the right side.
>
>I can see how there may be advantages to combining mouse and
>keyboard input into a single driver. That way it can be used with
>any application. The challenge I can foresee is trying to do that
>under multiple OSes and their window system environments, and making
>it user or application configurable. It would also be nice for such
>a driver provide a way to emulate a keyset/mouse combo using a
>standard keyboard/mouse with an appropriate modifier (similar to an
>embedded numeric keypad using the numlock key)
>
>Up to now we've been treating the "vintage" keyset as an auxiliary
>input device, and allowing the AugTerm application to read the
>device through a set of APIs and interpret keypad/mouse input. For
>example, on Linux, the vintage keypad appear as a USB joystick and
>we read it through /dev/input/js0. The advantage is that we can
>leverage existing drivers on various OSes.
>
>There's also a separate question of what type of USB device the
>keyset should identify itself as, and if that should be one of the
>standard types then which one.
>
>
>
>
>> % > It is possible that Gary might be persuadable to do it off the clock.
>> % > However, I do not see that happening on the time schedule you
>> % > are laying out. I will ask gary tomorrow if the things that he
>> % > is interested in stepping up to this project by end of May or
>> % > not.
>>
>> % Thanks for taking this to them. There are certain promotional
>> % opportunities that AO might be able to take advantage of were it to
>> % do this on a pro-bono basis. However, I understand about the funding
>> % issue as well.
>>
>> Yes, there are some wins.
>>
>>
>> % In that case, could you find out what it would cost
>> % to get something ready to bid out for manufacturing in May or June by
>> % completing the hardware and electrical design, and building a
>> % prototype?
>>
>> Yes, I can get Gary to put together a quote for putting together
>> 12 units. Is that the number that you want?
>
>I'd suggest breaking the quote down into two parts. One is the NRE
>required to get it ready for manufacturing. The other is the cost
>of manufacturing certain numbers of units. It's hard to say how
>many we may need over time. As more people use the restored
>NLS/Augment system or the next generation system being planned, they
>may want to have a keyset. Some people may also want one purely as
>a collectable. In that case, we would like to be able to sell them
>one. I recommend quoting an initial 12, and then incremental units
>of 48 keysets (or whatever volume makes sense).
>
>
>
>> % We can probably get someone to do the drivers on a
>> % volunteer basis if you can take care of the hardware end. I'd expect
>> % that if we found funding, this would be work for hire that would be
>> % whoever funded it.
>>
>>
>> You will have to help me constrain the project some.
>> Do you want us to replicate directly what is there?
>> or do you want us to make some optimization for price?
>> Or do you want us to make any evolutionary steps for it?
>
>Optimizing for price would be fine. It would be great if we could
>retain the look and feel of the original, for those who may want one
>as an historical artifact. No need, though, to go through the
>effort of a 15-pin analog output that must be converted to a game
>port and again to a USB interface, for example. As to what type of
>USB device it would appear as, we'll need to get a bit of a
>technical discussion going on that.
>
>
>
>
>
>> % I'll hope to hear from you again in the next few days.
>>
>> I will talk to gary on monday and try to have you some
>> details with in a day or so.
>
>Thanks!
>
>
>>-----
>>John Sechrest . Helping people use
>> . computers and the Internet
>> . more effectively
>> .
>> . Internet: sechrest@peak.org
>> .
>> .
>> http://www.peak.org/~sechrest
>
>
>Philip Gust
>Nouveau Systems, Inc.
>
>phone: +1 650 961-7992
>fax: +1 520 843-7217
>
>
>mailto: gust@NouveauSystems.com (03)
Philip Gust
Nouveau Systems, Inc. (04)
phone: +1 650 961-7992
fax: +1 520 843-7217 (05)
mailto: gust@NouveauSystems.com (06)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://chm.cim3.net/forum/nls-technical/
Shared Files: http://chm.cim3.net/file/work/project/nls-restore/
Community Portal: http://www.computerhistory.org/
To Post: mailto:nls-technical@chm.cim3.net
Community Wiki: http://chm.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?NLS_Restoration (07)
|