Kinesis classic on a modern computer

~ nelsonminar

My RSI is flaring up so I thought I’d fire up my ancient Kinesis Classic keyboard, the one that saved my career 20+ years ago when I first had problems.

The keyboard has an ancient AT keyboard cable. I found it with a PS/2 adapter already attached, those two ports are electrically identical so the adapter is easy. I don’t have a PS/2 to USB adapter around the house but fortunately my 2019 PC still has PS/2 ports on the back. Purple for keyboard! After plugging it in the keyboard lit up but I had to reboot to make it actually work. IIRC that’s a problem with the old Kinesis firmware. It works fine with a second keyboard on USB.

It mostly seems to still work fine. Sometimes keys seem to be repeating when I don’t mean it, like I’ll press x once and xxx is inserted. It’s not frequent though, a missed interrupt maybe? I mostly still remember how to type with it too, I suspect it’ll take a day to adjust (took a week or more the first time).

I can’t find any documentation of the custom remapping I set up long ago. It sounds complicated but the main effect is to move keys more to where they are on a normal keyboard. Here’s what I found I had:

  • Bottom row right hand: all 4 arrow keys in hjkl vi configuration.
  • []{} remapped to bottom row left hand (where left and right arrow were)
  • `~ is moved to upper left (where += is on the Kinesis)
  • += is moved to caps lock
  • Caps Lock is unmapped.
  • Escape is moved to the key marked “delete” on the thumb
  • Delete is on lower left (where ~` is on the Kinesis).
  • The Backspace key sends VK_BACK in windows, a Backspace.
  • The Insert key is default, VK_INSERT.

I also went and found my ancient notes on the keyboard firmware for programming.

Progrm-Ctrl-F10   Reset keyboard memory 

Progrm-Backslash  Toggle keyclick mode 
Progrm-Hyphen     Toggle tones for caps lock, etc. 
Progrm-F9-xx      Change repeat rate to xx 
                    F1 .5 cps  F2  3 cps F3  5 cps  F4   7 cps  F5   10 cps  F6   15 cps
                    F7 20 cps  F8 30 cps F9 40 cps  F10 60 cps  F11 125 cps  F12 300 cps 

Progrm-Ctrl-F5    Toggle Dvorak/Qwerty mode 

Progrm-Shift-F6   Toggle shift as sticky modifier 
Progrm-Ctrl-F6    Toggle control as sticky modifier 
Progrm-Alt-F6     Toggle alt as sticky modifier 

Progrm-F12        Enter/exit remapping mode 

Progrm-F11        Enter/exit macro definition mode 
Progrm-F7         Make macro pause for data / End entering macro data 
Progrm-F8         Put a half-second delay into a macro 
Progrm-F10        Disable/Enable all macros

Shift-Shift-F12   Report firmware version (press both shift keys)