I have to diasgree, sorry :-)


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Posted by matt(v) on September 30, 1999 at 16:32:34:

In Reply to: Re: Question on dual keyboard circuit... posted by =-JacK-= on September 30, 1999 at 14:15:53:

: I built Stephan Hans' keyboard splitter last year. It works perfectly for what I think you a proposing. Both keyboards are 100% functional simultaneously (you can type with one hand on each keyboard if you want to). The only exception is that the status LEDs only work on the "master" keyboard..
: hope this helps.

All true

but when playing a game you tend to HOLD the buttons/directions rather than just pressing them quickly and this is where the keyboard splitter falls down.

What often happens is you get a key "stuck down". say you were holding the left key on one keyboard and pushed space on the other, The spitter would be sending a stream of lefts to the PC, when you hit space on the other keyboard the encoder would pause breifly to send the space from the second keyboard before flicking back to send lefts from the first. All Good.

However if you stopped pressing left very shortly after you hit space then the space would be sent and the left key would be stuck on, the only way to stop moving left is to hit it again. Very anoying.
It's hard to explain and i'm not doing a good job, play a game where there are lots of buttons being held down and you will see what I mean.

So no, you can't just use both the keyboards for playing games. Or rather you can but it doesn't work properly. Try it out and see what I mean.

Matt(v) not Matt M :-)

PS for real fun try pluging a keyboard splitter into a keybaord splitter, careful you don't draw too much power though, you might need an external adaptor.

I'm not trying to dog you or anything jack but i have tried this many times and on many computers (and even with different splitter designs) and they all do the same thing. I would hate for this guy to get his project all done, plug it in and find out it wasn't doing what he wanted. So I thought it better to warn him at this stage. Not trying to start a fight, just giving my perspective.




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