Thread: Interrupts from a keyboard?

The keyboard controller (which is part of the PC motherboard) will indeed issue interrupts - at least twice for every key that is pressed (once for the "key down", and again for the " key up" - some keys also have more than one key-code [an extension byte followed by the actual key code], which makes it 4 interrupts for extension byte, key down, extension byte and key up)

It is a slightly different matter, however, to get that interrupt to directly interact with your application. In Windows or Linux, you'd certainly not do that with any great ease.

There are ways to POLL if the keyboard has any data available, and if not, go on and do something else. Check the FAQ on "how do I read user input without having to hit enter" (or some title close to that). With some slight tweaks, you should be able to make that code do what you want.

In all modern OS's, interrupts are handled by a device driver, which runs inside the kernel-space. User-code only gets to see what has been process.

Originally Posted by Eldarion

I don't know much about interrupts, but everything I've seen always refers to hardware, and as far as I can tell, a keyboard is hardware... but no one ever seems to use them.

They are used by the operating system, not user code.

(I also want to know how to set them up in C for microcontroller programming, which isn't made obvious anywhere that I can see, but the C and Cpp boards are seperate, so this is a bonus question...)

On a microcontroller where there is no "operating system," you receive interrupts directly. Usually, it's a simple as placing the address of your interrupt handler into a special location, then enabling the corresponding interrupts. The details are given in the manual for the microcontroller, and vary quite a bit.

Yes, it's possible.

If you are using Windows, follow the example here:
http://faq.cprogramming.com/cgi-bin/...&id=1043284392

Code:

  if (WaitForSingleObject(stdIn, INFINITE) == WAIT_OBJECT_0)
  {
    DWORD num;
    ReadConsole(stdIn, &ch, 1, &num, NULL);

  }

If you change INFINITE to, for example, 0, it will wait zero amount of time for the stdIn to have a character available.

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Mats