Keyboard as regular keyboard?

[kumpri]

Hi all,

first post here, please be gentle :)

I'm trying to use non-game ROMs with RetroPie. But am struggling to use keyboard input in such ROMs. I didn't find any documentation on how to not map keyboard to RetroPad and use it as a regular keyboard input instead. Any suggestion will be much appreciated.

I'm on RPi 1, RetroPie 4.4.

Best,
KX

[quicksilver]

@kumpri Some more info about your setup and what you're trying to do specifically would help. Please read: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first and post the relevant info.

If you want the keyboard to be used as a keyboard and not a game controller, just dont map it. Simply plugging it into your pi, it will function like a keyboard.

[kumpri]

@quicksilver thanks for your response. I'm trying to run an old text editor in ZX Spectrum emulator (ROM from http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/yu/ZX/Utils/Html/Ines.php). The editor runs, but I can't type anything because the keyboard is mapped as a controller.

As I understand the only way to control EmulationStation is via a mapped controller. If I don't use a controller then i need to map the keyboard (I tried running ES without any mapping and it doesn't respond). I don't own a gamepad so I need to map the keyboard, at least this is my understanding.

It seems I might need to run the emulator without the elegance of ES..

[dudleydes]

@kumpri As you mentioned RetroPad, I assume you are using lr-fuse. In which case, the following from the emulator Github README may be of interest:

For keyboard games: Set users 1 and 2 to none, and user 3 to Sinclair Keyboard. You won't have any joystick and the embedded keyboard won't work, but the entire physical keyboard will be available for you to type in those text adventure commands.

[BuZz]

I would recommend the standalone Fuse emulator for keyboard use. Has a lot more functionality if you don't want to just play games. Eg. Typing in code, saving things etc.