PS2 Protocol

Klazen

Hi,

I recently purchased a cue©at barcode scanner, and am trying to get my Propeller to read information out of it. I have been on the internet and found methods of hacking the scanners to output unencrypted data, that was easy enough. However, I am not sure how to communicate with the device. I also cannot seem to find much information on the PS2 protocol itself. I thought about reverse-engineering the keyboard object, but it is written in assembly, and I am not familiar enough with that to get very far. Is there any way I can whip up some code so that these two devices can talk to eachother?

SRLM

I'm working on a keyboard / mouse emulator object right now. Should have something out soon (ha! 2 or 3 weeks). Anyway, the PS/2 protocol is fairly simple once you get your head wrapped around it. Take a look at this set of sheets. It's very useful. Can you post a link to the scanner docs and pictures?

Klazen

Seeing as how the company didn't appreciate people reverse engineering their products, I can't say that there is much info available regarding them. The most I could find was just googling up some information about them.

Paul Baker

I have a cue cat, though I haven't had the chance to interface it·with the Propeller. It was my impression that it simply sends characters as if it were a keyboard with a predefined header so that a driver can recognize the cue cat datastream and pull it from the keyboard driver so it doesn't get input into whatever program has focus. So you should be able to use the standard·keyboard driver and just deal with the characters it spits out to you.

I also have some C code for creating a driver on a linux system, without modification of the cuecat. The driver does the decryption of the datastream for you. I can post the code (as-is, with no further support) if you want it.

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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer

Parallax, Inc.

Post Edited (Paul Baker (Parallax)) : 11/13/2008 11:03:38 PM GMT

blittled

I have a cuecat I got a long time ago at Radio Shack. Paul, I would be interested in that code. Now I just have to go into the attic find it and blow the dust off of it!

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What electronics need - MORE POWER!!!!!!!

Post Edited (blittled) : 11/14/2008 12:08:49 AM GMT

Paul Baker

Ok here it is, I think there's actually two differnt sets of code in there, a single c file in a standalone, then the directory with the code for creating linux driver code. I think I got them from different sources.


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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer

Parallax, Inc.

SRLM

As a side note, the PS/2 protocol has two type of data sending modes: remote and stream. Stream sends the data as it comes in up to a predefined max rate, while remote waits until the host asks the device to send the data. The device is expected to hold up to 16 bytes of data in remote mode.