MS Works starts but keyboard won't work

[c4sea]

Hi,

I am trying to get MS Works 2.0 (1990) working. Basically, Works starts and the mouse also works. Even the printing works like a charm...

But just the keyboard is still not working: By typing into a Works document/table the keystrokes are caught by the vDos prompt !?

I am using a Lenovo Notebook with a german keyboard layout.

Any help would be welcome. Thanks in advance

Chris

P.S.: This is a similar behaviour as also mentioned by wilsonstewart on Jul 12, 2019: "DOS app starts but keyboard won't work". But this thread seems to be abandoned and is not particulary for MS Works.

P.P.S.: I also tried vDosPlus. The keyboard is almost(!) working, even for Works; except the prompt accept the german characters and the QWERTZ keyboard but MS Works still refers to an us QWERTY keyboard - which is no solution for my 84-years old dad who needs "his" Works  ...  

[Jos]

vDos makes keystrokes available to DOS programs, they just have to use BIOS or DOS functions to communicate with the keyboard.
MS Works, like MS Edit, will use Interrupt 9 instead, You’ll have to ask MS why.
Interrupt 9 only returns the number of a key, no ASCII character. So requires a keyboard driver (XKEYB of FreeDos) to be loaded for non-international US keyboards(in vDosPlus or DOSBox).

Jos

[c4sea]

Thanks for the hint! XKEYB was the keyword I was looking for. At least Works under vDosPlus now uses the german character set. I followed the description in chapter 5 ("Non-USA keyboard support and date formats") of www.vdosplus.org/tips.htm:

1. Download the FreeDOS XKEYB-package from the given downlaod link and copy keyb.exe and keyboard.sys from the unzipped bin-folder to the vDosPlus main directory.

2. Add the following lines to the autoexec.txt of vDosPlus:
CHCP 850
KEYB GR,850 /9

Happy New Year!
Chris

[Jos]

Glad it works for your dad. Interrupt 9 and a required keyboard driver like XKEYB will never be supported in vDos.
That comes with complications, and anomalies, no one expects or wants.

Jos