Lab 3: keyboard and i8042

Generated folder: labs/kbd/

Lab 3 moves from periodic events to human input. A key press is not a character; it is a device event that may arrive as one or more scancode bytes. Characters belong to text input, layouts, modifiers, and application policy. Scancodes belong to the device stream.

You work below the text-input layer to see how a system learns that a physical key changed state. That knowledge serves games, editors, shells, debug consoles, and any project that needs responsive controls.

Read why keyboards are controller streams, then the keyboard controller and scancode rules. Compare interrupts and polling, learn the KBC commands used by the lab, and combine keyboard and timer events in multiple devices. Complete the tasks, then compare with modern keyboards.

TIP

Treat the keyboard as a byte stream first. Turn bytes into application actions only after the low-level parser is correct.