I just figured out how to get the most out of this Mac keyboard under Windows XP.

I came up with a little registry hack that solves all my problems! Try it if you’re feeling adventurous. It could screw up your whole key mapping if you’re not careful, though! Again, this works on my Design Concepts keyboard, and the CompUSA SKU is 299283.

The registry hack below does the following:

Makes the left alt/option key the left Windows key.

Makes the left squigglebox key the left alt key.

Makes the right alt/option key the right Windows key.

Makes the right squigglebox key the right alt key.

Makes F13 act like PrintScreen.

Makes F14 act like ScrollLock.

Makes F15 pop up the ever-handy Calculator (tee-hee)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]

"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,08,00,00,00,5B,E0,38,00,

38,00,5B,E0,5C,E0,38,E0,38,E0,5C,E0,37,E0,64,00,

46,00,65,00,21,E0,66,00,00,00,00,00

Go ahead and import that into your Windows 2000 or XP registry. The “ScanCode Map” line should be one long line, but I wrapped it here for clarity.

I couldn’t figure out how to make the power/sleep button do anything, and I mapped it be Power, Sleep, and Wake, all of which did nothing. I’m not really sure why, but I’ve never actually used a button of that kind under Windows before, so I’m not sure how it’s supposed to work anyway!

If you’re not happy with my key mappings and want to make your own, you’ll find everything you need to know in this article. To find out which hex codes YOUR keyboard uses for non-standard keys, (and there is some variation in USB keyboards) PassMark’s KeyboardTest is invaluable.

The one holdout on the keyboard was the eject key. I can’t seem to make that guy do anything. I think it’s being blocked at the BIOS level because KeyboardTest responded in some way to every key that was pressed EXCEPT the eject key, so who knows what’s up with that.

Here’s a helpful PDF that gives you the low-down on keyboard scan codes. Unless you want to get really confused, you should just use it as a reference for what you want the keys to do. Stick to using KeyboardTest to find out what scan codes your keyboard uses. For the purposes of remapping keys in Windows, you’ll want to refer to the column labeled “PS/2 Set 1 Make” in that PDF. Also, if you see anything in that column listed as, say, “E0 5E”, you should enter it into the registry as “5E,E0”.

It sounds harder than it is, but really you were never meant to remap keys in Windows, so this is kind of a hacky thing to get it working. And brother it works!