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From: nather@ut-sally.UUCP (Ed Nather)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: READING PC/XT KEYPAD
Message-ID: <5059@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Jun-86 10:17:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.5059
Posted: Tue Jun  3 10:17:22 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Jun-86 17:14:44 EDT
References: <728@tekcbi.UUCP> <868@cyb-eng.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 17

In article <868@cyb-eng.UUCP>, bc@cyb-eng.UUCP (Bill Crews) writes:
> DOS calls stick to ASCII or "extended ASCII".  To get to all keys, you must
> use BIOS and deal with the scan codes.  

Not so.  Read in a keyboard character using, say, "c = fgetc(stdin)" or
whatever, then test for "c == NULL".  If it IS NULL, then bring in the
character following, which tells you which "extended code" keystroke
was done.  The IBM manual tells you the mapping between these "NULL-
escaped" codes and the ASCII character set, but their chart is thoroughly
confusing and I couldn't figure it out; I wrote a small program
to print out this "second code" when a keypad or function key was
pressed.  Works like a champ.  And, look ma!  No bios calls!
-- 
Ed Nather
Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin
{allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather
nather@astro.AS.UTEXAS.EDU