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Russian MSX Keyboard


http://www.leningrad.su/museum/

The Russian MSX keyboard is used in the generic MSX Russian and MSX2 Russian machines.

Here's the list of the concerned specific machines (* = this machine is without numeric keypad) :

- MSX machines : Yamaha YIS-503IIR (*)

- MSX2 machines : Sony HB-F9P Russian / other specific MSX2 Russian machines will be added in the future (we need to add the network support !)

The MSX keyboard is very different from a standard PC keyboard (JCUKEN matrix instead of QWERTY matrix). The Caps key toggles bigger sized alphabet characters.

The MSX keyboard has five physical function keys. To access function key 6 to 10, you need to hold down the SHIFT key and press one of the keys F1 to F5.

As some MSX keys don't exist on a PC keyboard, the emulator makes also some adjustements to support the complete MSX keyboard :
- the PC key before the "1" key is used for emulate the extrem right MSX key on the third row
- the extrem right PC key on the third row is used to emulate the extrem right MSX key on the first row

Specific MSX keys are mapped to the following PC keyboard keys :

MSX key   PC key    
         
Select   End   Used in some games and applications (it's also the case of the Esc key).
Stop   Page Up   Allows to pause and resume a task in the MSX-BASIC or MSX-DOS environment. When you press this key while holding the Ctrl key, the current task will be abruptly broken.
Clr Home   Home   Allows to move the cursor to the top left of the screen. If you press Shift + Clr Home, the screen will be cleared.
Graph   Left Alt   Gives graphical characters by pressing it with a normal character. Can be combined with Shift.
Cyrillic   Right Alt   Toggles between Russian and normal mode.
Comma on numpad   Page Down    
Question Mark   Right Ctrl   Allows to write the Question Mark character (?). Combined with Shift, it gives the Slash character (/).


The tables underneath show you how to generate special characters with key-combinations of your PC keyboard :

Normal mode   Normal mode + Shift
 
Cyrillic mode   Cyrillic mode + Shift
 
Graph   Graph + Shift
 

The extrem right character of the fourth row can be typed by using the RightCtrl key (+ eventually Shift).


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