[Simh] LK461 keyboard on Linux

[Peter Allan]

I have been trying to set up my Linux PC to give the "proper VMS
experience". I run Fedora or CentOS for preference, but I could install
other versions of Linux if you know that they would solve my problem. I have
built and installed SIMH and got VMS 7.3-2 running on it. I can connect the
Linux X server to VMS on the emulated microVAX via tap. So far, so good.

However, in order to get the proper VMS experience, obviously I need a
DEC-style keyboard. I have an LK461 keyboard (which has a PS/2 plug), but my
problem is that there are some keys that do nothing on Linux and I hope that
someone out there has solved this problem already.

The keys that do nothing are F13, F14, Help, Do and F18. Linux does not
recognise these keys at the console level, never mind when running X, so I
believe I need to address the problem at the level of the scan codes that
the keyboard generates.

I am aware of the lkkbd kernel driver, but I have failed to get this to do
anything useful. I have compiled it and I can load it with insmod (although
modprobe fails to find it), but this appears to have no effect.

I can also get the standard Linux keyboard driver to translate the scan
codes from the keys that are not recognised to whatever I want using the
setkeycodes command, but I don't know what to set them to.

I have seen statements that recent versions of Fedora recognise an LK
keyboard, but I have failed to get Fedora Core 10 or FC13 to recognise that
I have an LK461 attached to my computer when I installed them, or to be able
to change the keyboard layout later on.

I feel that I am close to getting the LK461 keyboard to work properly and I
hope that I am missing something that ought to be obvious. Can anyone help?
If you can, please give exact details of what I need to do.

Peter Allan
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