Disabling Key Click on 800?

[Cybernoid]

Okay, next question:

 

I know that you can disable the Key Click on an XL/XE machine by poking a non-zero number into $2db, but is it possible to disable the key click on the 800 (OS A/B)?

 

Do I need to write my own K: handler?

 

 

Thanks,

~C

[Plastron]

The answer is yes but lol i can not remember how.

 

The click on the 800 comes from the internal speaker and i know you can control it as there were once some stero demos made using the keyboard speaker.

 

Get yourself a copy of Mapping the artai you will find it in there i am sure.

 

Andy

[Cybernoid]

Hmm, I have looked through http://www.atariarchives.org/mapping/memorymap.php and have yet to find it...

[deathtrappomegranate]

If you just want to do this for your own machine, you could consider adding a switch for the speaker.

[Cybernoid]

I don't have an 800 myself, but I know a few people who do.

 

Basically, I want to know how to disable the key click on the 800 for use in my game JellyBeans. JellyBeans works great on the 800 except for when you want to type a message to another player. In this case the screen shifts up and down during typing.

 

I suspect that this is caused by the K: handler on the 800, which uses WSYNC to control the timing of the key click. I use WSYNC and DLIs to control some of the graphics, so this causes all sorts of timing issues.

 

So it not so much as the key click itself that is annoying, it is how it is generated.

 

Any ideas?

 

 

Thanks,

~C~

[ZylonBane]

Three ways to do it:

1. Install a toggle switch on one of the speaker wires.

2. Install a patched OS ROM that gets rid of the click.

3. Install a replacement K: handler that gets rid of the click.

 

I went for option #1 back in my wasted youth.

 

Now, if you're just writing a game, don't even use the K: handler. Poll the keyboard register directly. That's what most games do.

[Cybernoid]

Ah ok. This makes sense. I am half using the K: handler and half polling the registers them selves in order to get SHIFT-CTRL char hits, but I think I can lose the K: handler altogether.

 

I forgot about this. This was some code I wrote for an ANSI term last year.

 

Thanks,

~C~

[ZylonBane]

Ahh, an ANSI terminal. Now that brings back Flickerterm coding memories.

[Cybernoid]

You wrote flickerterm?

 

I used the flicker idea to create a 40 col. color ANSI term with 13 colors for the background and foreground. It has a virtual 80 col. screen. But I did not finish it as I ran out of memory. I suppose I could release the source, if anyone is interested...

 

~C

[ZylonBane]

Yup, that was me. Sadly unfinished, but since I originally didn't plan to do anything more than a proof-of-concept, it's impressive that it got as far along as it did.

[LYNXGUY]

They only way that you can turn off the key click (which is annoying after a while) is to install a toggle switch on one of the speaker wires, I did this to mine and it was very easy to do.

 

My best friends cousin drilled a hole and he installed a push button switch to turn the key click off and on.

[Cybernoid]

Yeah, it seems that many people have installed the key-click-disabling switch. For me, I was just trying to solve a problem in JellyBeans when loaded onto an 800.

 

I did write a piece of code that polls for a change in the the raw key matrix code and produce ATASCII from it. Actually, my code does a pseudo-ATASCII-to-ASCII translation built in. This way I bypass the K: handler on the 800 and allow the terminal within JellyBeans to not make the screen jump up and down.

 

As an aside: Interestingly enough, I found that you cannot capture CTRL-SHIFT key presses for keys connected to keyboard lines 5 and 8. (I am sure that some of you already knew this....but it is obvious why when looking at the keyboard matrix picture). You cannot discover which line is active.

 

 

So, CTRL-SHIFT with F1,F2,F3,F4, *, +, ;, L, K, J, Z, X, C, V, B, and Help will not work....

 

Just thought that was interesting...