Dell Optiplex GX260 and GX520 keyboard problem

[Papalapa]

Hi, I'm facing a very strange issue and I do not find a solution:
After installing MS-DOS 6.22 in Spanish on these two computers I cannot configure the keboard in Spanish. When I press any symbol key another character is shown in the screen. Even starting from the 3 1/2" floppy the problem remains. Of course I cheched the keyboard configuration in both, AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS. Same happens with MS-DOS 5.00. Even I tried two different keyboards, an IBM PS/2 and a Logitech USB ones. The key question is that the same floppy sets and the same keyboards in another three vintage computers works perfectly.

On the other hand If I install the Spanish OS/2 Warp all works perfectly, even the OS/2 and MS-DOS windows under OS/2 Warp. Also, starting from OS/2 install disks the Spanish keyboard is succesfully loaded. It's crazy !!

More checkings and results after botting with a floppy with the following SOs:

DR-DOS 60. in Spanisk is OK
DR-DOS 8.0 English setting KEYB SP is OK
IBM-DOS 6.3 Spanish is OK
MS-DOS 5.0 in Spanish is NOT OK.
MS-DOS 6.22 English setting KEYB SP is NOT OK.

So, I'm almost sure that MS-DOS with Spanish keyboard is not compatible with the Dell Optiplex computers. What a pity !

Is there any know keyboard compatibility problem with these two Dell computers and Microsoft MS-DOS ? I didn't find nothing....

Thank you!

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Considering that the GX260 came out 11 years after MS-DOS 5, it's a wonder that it works as well as it does. Internationalization support was in its infancy in the early 90s, non-English language support was generally hard coded to work with very specific hardware of the time.

It sounds like whatever keyboard layout your Spanish keyboards are doesn't line up with whatever keyboard layout DOS is expecting, hence the characters being jumbled up.

I'm not at all familiar with international language support in DOS, but if there's an option in whatever driver/TSR to select between different keyboard layouts, you may try that. There are several different English keyboard layouts, the most widely used being QWERTY, but there's also DVORAK, AZERTY, QWERTZ, etc.

 

[Papalapa]

Considering that the GX260 came out 11 years after MS-DOS 5, it's a wonder that it works as well as it does. Internationalization support was in its infancy in the early 90s, non-English language support was generally hard coded to work with very specific hardware of the time.

It sounds like whatever keyboard layout your Spanish keyboards are doesn't line up with whatever keyboard layout DOS is expecting, hence the characters being jumbled up.

I'm not at all familiar with international language support in DOS, but if there's an option in whatever driver/TSR to select between different keyboard layouts, you may try that. There are several different English keyboard layouts, the most widely used being QWERTY, but there's also DVORAK, AZERTY, QWERTZ, etc.

Thank you for you information, but there are other old computers at home (IBM Netvista (1996), Toshiba T1910CS (1994), Honotron 911 (1992) ) That have no problems with MS-DOS 6.22 in Spanish and work like a charm. Also, the same happens with GX520 that was newer and that's why I suspect that there's some incompatibility. Anyway, IBM PC-DOS 6.30 works without problems so, I installed this version.

Spanish keyboard is QWERTY layout with some modifications, while AZERTY is French one and QWERTZ German one.