political rant

Actually, I just want to type something on my spiffy new illuminated Lightech keyboard. It's much better than the one that came with my new Dell PC.

OK, prediction: Obama hates Hillary. Biden knows that the FBI will criminally indict her and most of her campaign team, so he'll wait to announce.

The keyboard has a hot key that runs a calculator on the screen. Is that calculator built into the keyboard driver or something?

Reply to
John Larkin
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Can't be much worse.

Probably and waiting will do nothing except help Bernie.

It would have to be, or at least loaded by it. A keyboard driver is sorta odd, though. Did you have to install one? I guess my keyboards are all too bland to have drivers. ;-)

Reply to
krw

I suppose the driver could load from USB without your knowing, even.

Reply to
krw

It's probably the windows calc.exe, my keyboard has a calc key too that runs calc.exe. I think its part of the WHQ driver.

Cheers

Reply to
Martin Riddle

Yes, it looks like CALC, so it's basically a macro that the keyboard somehow pokes in as a command-line thing. I guess kb's have a private command-line portal or something.

One good thing about this keyboard, besides glowing in the dark, is that the INS key is tucked out of harm's way, and there is a gigantic DEL key instead.

Reply to
John Larkin

Den onsdag den 7. oktober 2015 kl. 22.02.20 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:

winkey,r,calc,enter

not much magic needed

-Lasse

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

Wowee! Really useful... NOT! ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

Den onsdag den 7. oktober 2015 kl. 22.38.49 UTC+2 skrev Jim Thompson:

?

-Lasse

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

It's a simple hot key definition. Click on a blank area of the desktop (so the focus is the desktop). Hit F1. Help screen will pop up. Type "hot key" in the search box, hit return. Read the directions what apply to your situation.

Linux has similar functionality but details will depend on whether you're running KDE, Gnome, or something else.

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Grizzly H.
Reply to
mixed nuts

What can that rudimentary calculator do that I can't do just about as quickly, by hand? ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

Den onsdag den 7. oktober 2015 kl. 22.58.27 UTC+2 skrev Jim Thompson:

switch it to scientific

-Lasse

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

I don't know where your hands have been.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

I have a TI-60X and a TI-83, and a Post slide rule (~1958)...

but who needs a calculator... just do it on your PSpice (or LTspice) schematic...

(The strange "red dot" notation is one of my "parts" gimmicks that forces parameter declarations into the netlist rather than the .CIR file, helping me automate complex subcircuits... this example is part of the subcircuit module that models excess phase in OpAmps.

Some may wonder at PIE=.... That's because many simulators balk at double declaration of a parameter... some of you will have a system parameter PI declared and some will not, so I dodge the possible conflict.) ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

It's not bad in sci mode. 32 place accuracy, and it logs the string of functions that you enter. Not RPN, but not bad.

Hex and unit conversions, too. You can copy/paste from the calc pane into the units converter.

Never noticed this one before.

Reply to
John Larkin

My keyboard is both bland and old enough to drink! The ones that have all the extra buttons for "start browser" or "start media player" sometimes have their own drivers.

I have a USB 3G modem that does this. It has a little bit of flash storage with the driver install package on it. Brand new out of the box, you plug it into your PC and it tells the OS "I'm a CD-ROM!" The OS dutifully finds the autorun.inf (in the flash) and executes it, which installs the modem driver. The first thing the modem driver does is to look for a USB "CD-ROM" drive with a certain vendor and product ID, and if it's there, it sends a magic byte sequence to the "CD-ROM". This causes the modem to drop the USB connection briefly, and then reconnect, this time saying "I'm a modem!" The OS then goes through the "I have a new modem" routine, and uses the drivers that were just installed. I think it's kind of slick, but it will get outdated over time as newer drivers and newer OSes come out.

Matt Roberds

Reply to
mroberds

At one time I used an 18YO Model-M at work. A couple of keys finally died, so it was sent to the great keyboard heaven.

Instead of loading the driver, perhaps it should have called home for a new driver, instead.

Reply to
krw

Be careful of the binary functions, there are a couple that gives you unexpected answers with no way to configure it to show correctly.

Jamie

Reply to
M Philbrook

Oooo...that sounds interesting. Do you remember what functions?

Once I had a Casio programmable that crashed badly in response to a few functions. A couple of other calculators did funny things like incrementing all digits (1111111111...2222222222...etc) if you turned it off and on rapidly.

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

Some of those are probably intentional test modes. Worked on a platform once where you had to press five keys at once to clear NVRAM; they called it the "Vulcan Nerve Pinch."

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Les Cargill
Reply to
Les Cargill

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