New Zaurus Successor?

[dougeeebear]

Surprised to hear your choice.
Not doubting you, but just wondering if you were referring to the screen in native 800x480 or 800x600 or the 1024x600 mode?

800x480 is crystal clear and definitely has larger fonts than c1000.

Granted I got the touch-screen version ...
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Actually, I'm talking about the 800x480 mode.
True, the screen is awesome, but the fonts are so fine I have a hard time with it.
Of course, I'm no spring chicken any more either

On the Zaurus, the fonts seem a bit bolder, which makes it easier for me to read.

I think if I liked the keyboard better, I might try changing the fonts to compensate, but the keyboard really sucks as far as I'm concerned and I don't feel like doing brain surgery on it to (maybe) make it better.

[Da_Blitz]

actually i have been thinking about giving matchbox a try on the thing as its not the fastest piece of hardware in the world. that and the fonts are a bit bigger (i hate tiny clocks)

[dougeeebear]

Well, after a couple days, I decided to try and experiment with the keyboard a little bit.
I gathered up all Kopsis' info on remapping the keys, and got up the courage to try and remove a couple of the keycaps.
I was successful at removing two of them without removing the keyboard by just prying up on them with my fingernails.
After the first two I think I might be able to change them successfully.
I'm not sure if I'm going for the hairbrush trick or not though.
I have a keyboard coming that I ordered on ebay.
I'm also going to play around with the fonts and see what I come up with there.

Doug

[Da_Blitz]

after reading up a bit on teh keycap problem i noticed that some people say that even after the mod the keys are not perfect

so bieng an egineer i look into it a bit futher,

the problem i see with teh hairbrush idea is that if you push it off center thenthe hair brush bristle also gets of center, the way to avoid this is to attach the hair brush bristle to the rubber itself so its always in the center and glue it there

then sharpen the top to a point that fits in the "cup" (at first i would have said a ball for the top but i relise just how hard that would be)

put button back in with point in cup and the force applied should now "in thery" be more along the verticle giving better button pushes

dont know if anyone thinks the effort is worth doing it but you can cheat by using pins rather than hair brisles if you have side cutters and a file, just make sure you take the point off or your fingers may be bleeding in a couple of months

anyway thats how i will be doing it, lets just say there was way too much caffine involved in teh creation of tihs idea

[dougeeebear]

after reading up a bit on teh keycap problem i noticed that some people say that even after the mod the keys are not perfect

so bieng an egineer i look into it a bit futher,

the problem i see with teh hairbrush idea is that if you push it off center thenthe hair brush bristle also gets of center, the way to avoid this is to attach the hair brush bristle to the rubber itself so its always in the center and glue it there

then sharpen the top to a point that fits in the "cup" (at first i would have said a ball for the top but i relise just how hard that would be)

put button back in with point in cup and the force applied should now "in thery" be more along the verticle giving better button pushes

dont know if anyone thinks the effort is worth doing it but you can cheat by using pins rather than hair brisles if you have side cutters and a file, just make sure you take the point off or your fingers may be bleeding in a couple of months

anyway thats how i will be doing it, lets just say there was way too much caffine involved in teh creation of tihs idea
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I think I'll just change the keycaps to start with, and maybe sometime at a later point, I'll mess around with a touchy/feely trick.

[kopsis]

after reading up a bit on teh keycap problem i noticed that some people say that even after the mod the keys are not perfect
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True, but the improvement is pretty dramatic. As one of my mentors used to say: "anyone can strive for perfection, but only the best engineers know how to stop at good enough."

Your idea sounds like it will work, but it's going to be a lot of extra work for that last fraction of a percent. Given that the hairbrush mod is totally reversable (as long as you don't glue the bristles in), you may want to try it first on a few keys and see what you think.

[dougeeebear]

Kopsis,
I just did a system backup, then installed your keyboard remapping files and edited the registry to check it out.
The keys are all perfect, except for the following:

The Alt and Windows keys are still working in their original position, as opposed to their being shown reversed in your final result photo.
Also, it appears the new F9 and F10 keys are cosmetic only, as they retained their original key mapping.

This is not a problem,  I just thought I would mention it.

Thanks for the tutorial,
Doug

[kopsis]

The keys are all perfect, except for the following:

The Alt and Windows keys are still working in their original position, as opposed to their being shown reversed in your final result photo.

Oops ... should have mentioned that in the article. They were not meant to be moved from their original positions. I accidentally swapped them when reassembling and didn't realize it until after I had taken the photos

Also, it appears the new F9 and F10 keys are cosmetic only, as they retained their original key mapping.

Yeah, I may map F9 and F10 (or maybe something else) to them eventually, so I stuck them on the KB "for future use".

[Da_Blitz]

thought about my mod a bit more and using the non pointy end should mean you dont have to glue it, glue would help but its my experince that glue + silicon is asking for trouble

basically you have the head on teh silicon and the smaller end (sharpended a bit) in the keycap

cant wait to try it,i would compare it to the hair brush butthe keyboards i bought off ebay dont seem to have any problems at all

[dougeeebear]

Oops ... should have mentioned that in the article. They were not meant to be moved from their original positions. I accidentally swapped them when reassembling and didn't realize it until after I had taken the photos

<snip>

Yeah, I may map F9 and F10 (or maybe something else) to them eventually, so I stuck them on the KB "for future use".
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Whew ... that's a relief, I thought I had done something wrong.
I might have to get that Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator and mess around with it.
I'm also going to have to try and figure out those registry entries for remapping keys.

Regards,
Doug

[fpp]

Do try the free Key Tweak utility, much easier than either !
I remapped most of the japanese keys on my SA1 to useful ones, with a couple to spare...

[dougeeebear]

Do try the free Key Tweak utility, much easier than either !
I remapped most of the japanese keys on my SA1 to useful ones, with a couple to spare...
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Will it also change existing Japenese keys, such as:

Code: [Select]

"      +      *
2      ;      :
--to-- the English versions

Code: [Select]

@      :      *
2      ;      8... etc ...

Or will it just remap a complete key as it is in it's current state?

[fpp]

As I understand it, Key Tweak deals with scan codes, ie it remaps an entire key to another. Individual values for the scan code can then be adjusted with MSKLC or a similar utility.

[dougeeebear]

I saw the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, but I don't want to install the .NET Framework.

[kopsis]

KeyTweak is is a "user interface" for modifying the "Keyboard Layout\Scancode Map" registry key. I had some problems with it mapping some of the "extended" keys, but once I understood what it's doing (and knew the scancodes for the various keys), it was pretty easy to modify the registry by hand to accomplish what I wanted.

KeyTweak lets you substitute one scancode for another but it won't let you change how a scancode is interpreted. For that you need Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MKLC). Yeah, the .NET requirement is annoying ... that's why I keep a "throw-away" Win2K VMWare virtual machine on one of my Linux boxes. Take a snapshot, install a bunch of bloated stuff, use it, when I don't need it any more I roll back to the snapshot