[ltp] Hacking the UltraNav USB keyboard

[Stephen Evanchik]

Hi Richard,

On Jan 21, 2008 7:39 PM, Richard Neill <rn214@hermes.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> Very old thinkpads (eg A22 and before) have the trackpoint emulate a PS2
> mouse. But the kernel provides an extra interface to the trackpoint,
> either in /sys, or via tp4d (kernel 2.4).
>
> Newer thinkpads (with a pad as well as a stick), and the USB Ultranav
> use a synaptics device, which is quite sophisticated. I'd expect that to
> have support for various modes of the daisy-chained trackpoint.
>

Prior to the Synaptics touchpad being introduced the Trackpoint was
just a PS/2 device that accepted some special commands. When the
UltraNav came out they just hooked the TrackPoint up to the pass-thru
port on the Synaptics controller but did not change any of the
device's characteristics.

You should see the TrackPoint's configuration settings in
/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serioX or  ../serioX/serioY depending on
your configuration.

The TrackPoint keyboard probably has the same devices attached to it
but instead of going over the i8042 controller it gets routed through
the USB system somewhere.

Maybe one day when I find one of these keyboards I'll poke around and
see if I can create the driver for it.

Stephen


-- 
Stephen Evanchik
http://stephen.evanchik.com