linuxconsole-dev

Latest analog joystick code

[Vojtech P. <vo...@su...>]

Hi!

Just wanted to inform you that I ran an interesting test today:

First, I digged out a very old original IBM design NS558 based gameport,
and my 5 years old QuickShot QS-201 analog joystick, cleaned the
joystick thoroughly, applied some special contact cleaning and contact
care sprays to all the pots in the joystick, and silicone grease to all
bearings.

Then I used my latest analog code (with two stage noise filtration) to
read data from the joystick. And, I've got 10.5 bits of precision from
it. That's more than most digital joysticks can do ... Compared to BIOS
routine which does 5-6 bits, this is quite nice. I wonder how much
Windows drivers do get.

I was also surprised about how much difference proper care of the pots
made - before I applied the sprays and silicone, the resolution was
somewhere about 8.5 bits.

-- 
Vojtech Pavlik
SuSE Labs

Re: Latest analog joystick code

[James S. <jsi...@ac...>]

> First, I digged out a very old original IBM design NS558 based gameport,
> and my 5 years old QuickShot QS-201 analog joystick, cleaned the
> joystick thoroughly, applied some special contact cleaning and contact
> care sprays to all the pots in the joystick, and silicone grease to all
> bearings.

Can I use my commodore joystick with linux? Only kidding. On the serious
side are converters from SUN keyboards to parallel port avaliable or do I
have to build one myself? I obtained a keyboard from a old IPX workstation
that went into the trash. 

As for CVS. I refined the fbdev API a little more after much talk about
ideas on how to handle it on the fbdev list. Pretty much everything should
compile and work for you. Their might be some bugs here and their with all
the drivers being cleaned up. I applied a nice patch Petr posted on the
lkml mailing list. If you have SMP machines please test it. I don't have a
SMP machine so I can't. 

Q: Why did they deprecate a.out support in linux?
A: Because a nasty coff is bad for your elf.

James Simmons  [jsi...@li...]               ____/| 
fbdev/console/gfx developer                             \ o.O| 
http://www.linux-fbdev.org                               =(_)= 
http://linuxgfx.sourceforge.net                            U
http://linuxconsole.sourceforge.net

Re: Latest analog joystick code

[Vojtech P. <vo...@su...>]

On Wed, May 31, 2000 at 02:56:36PM -0400, James Simmons wrote:
> 
> > First, I digged out a very old original IBM design NS558 based gameport,
> > and my 5 years old QuickShot QS-201 analog joystick, cleaned the
> > joystick thoroughly, applied some special contact cleaning and contact
> > care sprays to all the pots in the joystick, and silicone grease to all
> > bearings.
> 
> Can I use my commodore joystick with linux? Only kidding.

Well, the QS-201 is a PC joystick, but *YES* you can use your commodore
joystick with Linux. :) Actually it's supported by the gamecon.c, db9.c and
turbografx.c. And the commodore-to-parallel adapters are easy to build.

> On the serious
> side are converters from SUN keyboards to parallel port avaliable or do I
> have to build one myself? I obtained a keyboard from a old IPX workstation
> that went into the trash. 

You'll have to build it yourself. I know of no manufacturers that would
be producing them.

> As for CVS. I refined the fbdev API a little more after much talk about
> ideas on how to handle it on the fbdev list. Pretty much everything should
> compile and work for you. Their might be some bugs here and their with all
> the drivers being cleaned up. I applied a nice patch Petr posted on the
> lkml mailing list. If you have SMP machines please test it. I don't have a
> SMP machine so I can't. 

Btw, there is one little, but annoying bug that disabling 'Extended
terminal emulation' makes the kernel uncompilable ...

-- 
Vojtech Pavlik
SuSE Labs

Re: Latest analog joystick code

[James S. <jsi...@ac...>]

> > Can I use my commodore joystick with linux? Only kidding.
> 
> Well, the QS-201 is a PC joystick, but *YES* you can use your commodore
> joystick with Linux. :) Actually it's supported by the gamecon.c, db9.c and
> turbografx.c. And the commodore-to-parallel adapters are easy to build.

Really :) Can you post where this info is to build this adapter. I have a
few commodore joysticks. I also have a few atari 2600 paddles and
joysticks too. He he. This is really cool.

> > On the serious
> > side are converters from SUN keyboards to parallel port avaliable or do I
> > have to build one myself? I obtained a keyboard from a old IPX workstation
> > that went into the trash. 
> 
> You'll have to build it yourself. I know of no manufacturers that would
> be producing them.

You have it on your web page so I will build one when I get the time. 
http://www.suse.cz/development/input/

By the way your stuff works great. The only difference I have noticed is
if I press ALT-F# more than once it will VT switch then print a capital
letter where its position in the alphabet is #. At a login in prompt I get
a ^[[A or ^[[B etc depending on which # VT we are one. I wonder if this is
from the console code with the new emulation or from the keyboard driver. 
Does this happen for a USB keyboard thats attached to a VT ? 

> Btw, there is one little, but annoying bug that disabling 'Extended
> terminal emulation' makes the kernel uncompilable ...

Yeah. I have left it alone waiting for Dominik to work on that. Dominik?

Q: Why did they deprecate a.out support in linux?
A: Because a nasty coff is bad for your elf.

James Simmons  [jsi...@li...]               ____/| 
fbdev/console/gfx developer                             \ o.O| 
http://www.linux-fbdev.org                               =(_)= 
http://linuxgfx.sourceforge.net                            U
http://linuxconsole.sourceforge.net

Re: Latest analog joystick code

[Vojtech P. <vo...@su...>]

On Wed, May 31, 2000 at 08:59:40PM -0400, James Simmons wrote:
> 
> > > Can I use my commodore joystick with linux? Only kidding.
> > 
> > Well, the QS-201 is a PC joystick, but *YES* you can use your commodore
> > joystick with Linux. :) Actually it's supported by the gamecon.c, db9.c and
> > turbografx.c. And the commodore-to-parallel adapters are easy to build.
> 
> Really :) Can you post where this info is to build this adapter. I have a
> few commodore joysticks. I also have a few atari 2600 paddles and
> joysticks too. He he. This is really cool.

linux/Documentation/joystick-parport.txt

> By the way your stuff works great. The only difference I have noticed is
> if I press ALT-F# more than once it will VT switch then print a capital
> letter where its position in the alphabet is #. At a login in prompt I get
> a ^[[A or ^[[B etc depending on which # VT we are one. I wonder if this is
> from the console code with the new emulation or from the keyboard driver. 
> Does this happen for a USB keyboard thats attached to a VT ? 

Yes, I know about this and will be looking for the cause. Somehow the
shift state isn't carried across different VT's. It might be a bug in my
changes to char/keyboard.c, but I doubt that - I kept them minimal.

Anyway, I'd like to rewrite (or better someone else to rewrite :)
keyboard.c - it's big, and complex, and doesn't have very clean
interface to the rest of the system.

Also, escape sequences are stored right in the keymaps, with I doubt
does come well with selectable VT emulations.

Oh, and last comment: The input subsystem supports more than 3 LEDs.
I've seen places in the VT code that limits this to 3 - this should be
eliminated.

-- 
Vojtech Pavlik
SuSE Labs

Re: Latest analog joystick code

[James S. <jsi...@ac...>]

> linux/Documentation/joystick-parport.txt

Good stuff. I'm going to pass it off to our local LUG. We have a few
electronics buffs in the group.

> > By the way your stuff works great. The only difference I have noticed is
> > if I press ALT-F# more than once it will VT switch then print a capital
> > letter where its position in the alphabet is #. At a login in prompt I get
> > a ^[[A or ^[[B etc depending on which # VT we are one. I wonder if this is
> > from the console code with the new emulation or from the keyboard driver. 
> > Does this happen for a USB keyboard thats attached to a VT ? 
> 
> Yes, I know about this and will be looking for the cause. Somehow the
> shift state isn't carried across different VT's. It might be a bug in my
> changes to char/keyboard.c, but I doubt that - I kept them minimal.

It's not only when I VT switch away. If I'm on VT 1 and keep pressing 
Alt-F1 it also prints out a A. 

> Anyway, I'd like to rewrite (or better someone else to rewrite :)
> keyboard.c - it's big, and complex, and doesn't have very clean
> interface to the rest of the system.

Better than what was before. Its a matter of creating a better raw
keyboard to console handling. Especially if we are going to support per VT 
keymaps. 

> Also, escape sequences are stored right in the keymaps, with I doubt
> does come well with selectable VT emulations.
>
> Oh, and last comment: The input subsystem supports more than 3 LEDs.
> I've seen places in the VT code that limits this to 3 - this should be
> eliminated.

Noted. Some things to cleanup. Is Dominik still will us? Dominik?

Re: Latest analog joystick code

[Vojtech P. <vo...@su...>]

On Thu, Jun 01, 2000 at 02:16:47PM -0400, James Simmons wrote:

> > Yes, I know about this and will be looking for the cause. Somehow the
> > shift state isn't carried across different VT's. It might be a bug in my
> > changes to char/keyboard.c, but I doubt that - I kept them minimal.
> 
> It's not only when I VT switch away. If I'm on VT 1 and keep pressing 
> Alt-F1 it also prints out a A. 

Thanks for the info. But it's even weirder than just that. Try running
a 'cat' on the VT - the problem disappears. I'll try to look into it.

> > Anyway, I'd like to rewrite (or better someone else to rewrite :)
> > keyboard.c - it's big, and complex, and doesn't have very clean
> > interface to the rest of the system.
> 
> Better than what was before. Its a matter of creating a better raw
> keyboard to console handling. Especially if we are going to support per VT 
> keymaps. 

Oh, yes. Per-VT keymaps will consume quite a lot of memory, btw ...

-- 
Vojtech Pavlik
SuSE Labs

Re: Latest analog joystick code

[James S. <jsi...@ac...>]

> > It's not only when I VT switch away. If I'm on VT 1 and keep pressing 
> > Alt-F1 it also prints out a A. 
> 
> Thanks for the info. But it's even weirder than just that. Try running
> a 'cat' on the VT - the problem disappears. I'll try to look into it.

That is strange. I haven't been able to see anything. The 3Dfx driver with
the new API is giving me the infamous blank screen. So I will be looking
threw that code tomorrow. Video drivers are the worst to debug. The vgacon
driver works like a charm. Once I get the first driver working like a
charm the rest should be easy. The matrox works great. OF course I haven't
touched it.

> Oh, yes. Per-VT keymaps will consume quite a lot of memory, btw ...

Not if you take the write on copy approach. All VC keymap point to same
keymap. If userland wants a different keymap it changes the pointer of the
the VC keymap to the new keymap. The bigger problem is the number of
vc_data we can have. With the present console system we have 64 allocated
vc_data structs for one head. With fbdev you can have up to 256 heads and
USB up to 127 keyboards. With a AT or PS/2 keyboard we can a total of 128
complete VTs. This means 128 * 64 = 8,192 vc_data structs. This means we
have to adopt a dynamic approach to allocating VCs.