Sun Type 6 USB keyboard info

Getting a keyboard

The Sun Type 6 USB keyboard (part number possibly 320-1273 or 320-1275, depending on who you ask) is a USB keyboard with the same key layout as the much-loved Sun Type 5 UNIX keyboard, but with the added advantage of having a USB port which is likely to match the one on the back of your PC (or, for that matter, Macintosh).

Part number 320-1275 is in Sun's Sun Ray 1 Spare Parts list. However, it's not on the store.sun.com web site.

Making a USB keyboard work with Linux

The USB support in 2.2 kernels is shaky at best. I installed 2.3.99-pre3, as that was the most recent version available at the time I installed. My .config is available.

It didn't work the first time I turned it on; I had to install some modules by hand (they didn't get modprobed correctly). Here's the list of currently installed modules on my working system:

pirx: lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
sr_mod                 13112   0 (autoclean)
af_packet               7868   0 (autoclean)
hid                    10724   0 (unused)
keybdev                 1612   0 (unused)
usb-uhci               20648   0 (unused)
usbcore                45600   0 [hid usb-uhci]
input                   1948   1 [hid keybdev]
tulip                  33024   1
ad1816                  8828   1
sound                  57708   0 [ad1816]
soundcore               3492   5 [sound]
isa-pnp                27528   0 [ad1816]

At least some of those are doubtless not needed. I'd guess the necessary ones include hid, keyboard, usb-uhci, usbcore, and input.

I started to create an xkb setup for the type 6, but got interrupted before I finished it. My partial work is xkb.diff. You'll likely have to be an X hacker for this to be of any use to you.

The requisite hackery for /etc/X11/XF86Config:

Section "Keyboard"
    Protocol    "Standard"

    XkbModel   "sun_type6_usb"
    XkbLayout  "us(sun_type6_usb)"
    XkbSymbols "us(sun_type6_usb)"
EndSection