keytari

NOTE:

Due to systemd failure the instructions below won't work out of the box. Appologies. For now you need to do sudo setfacl -m g:input:rw /dev/uinput at each boot to get this to work. I'd love to point to documentation about this, but the systemd team has left TAGS+="uaccess" undocumented since 2016. I'll have a better solution in a day or two.

Atari 8-bit keyboard bridge

WARNING

In certian contexts this code is very insecure. The Atari 8-bit, even with a rapidus CPU upgrade, is not fast enough to participate in meaningful encryption. For that reason, keystrokes are sent in the clear. This is mitigated by the fact that the transport is WiFi with WPA2 security and should be about as secure as a bluetooth keyboard, but you have been warned.

Installation on a Linux PC

Linux side

Step 1: Create a user

We dont want to run keytari as root, so lets create a user. sudo useradd -rM -G input keytari

Step 2: Allow access to /dev/uinput

/dev/uinput is the way we access the linux input subsystem. By default it is only accessable by root. We need to allow keytari to access it. We do this with a udev rule supplied in this repository. sudo cp 99-keytari-input.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/ Once its added you need to get udev to see it. sudo systemctl restart systemd-udevd sudo udevadm trigger

Step 3: Install the systemd unit

Now we need to add the systemdd unit so that the service starts with our computer. sudo cp keytari.service /etc/systemd/system/keytari.service sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl enable keyatari

Step 4: Copy keymap config

We need to install a keymap that keytari will use to map the Atari keys to their Linux equivilents. sudo mkdir /etc/keytari sudo cp keymap.json /etc/keytari

Step 5: Start keytari

sudo systemctl start keytari At this point keytari should be running on the PC. You can check the system log with journalctl -fe to verify this.

Atari side

Step 1: Edit the KEYTARI.BAS file to set your hostname

I've found that supplying an IP here does not work and a DNS name does. This might just be unique to my setup. I got around this by setting a DNS name for my PC in my router. Change "HOSTNAME-HERE" to the DNS name of your PC.

Step 2: Compile KEYTARI.BAS

This assumes you have FastBasic available. Run FBC and supply KEYTARI.BAS as the filename

Step 3: Run

Type in KEYTARI and you should get a message that says Connected. If so, keystrokes from your Atari should now appear on your PC.