I've had pretty much the same problem as well.

I have an Acer Aspire 5920G laptop (with the 437 US keycode layout), running Windows Vista Home Premium and DOSBox 7.2.

One thing I will add about the mapper is that the default mapper configuration has ' [ ] and \ bound to the exact keys, but when I type those keys, ' and [ won't even register, and ] outputs [ and \ outputs ].

Now, I can remap these keys, but I have to do it every time I enter DOSBox, which is sometimes a hassle, especially since I'm going to use it for a class presentation on QBASIC.

I presume both of you have already tried the stuff mentioned in the readme, right?

Neorave - you're basically saying the same as I'm saying, just in different words. Those particular mismappings are the same on mine (except that on my UK keyboard, it's a # key not a \ key.

And yes, I have tried what's in README.txt. But I hadn't noticed the section "Q: I can't type \ or : in DOSBox." before.

• About half of the "fixes" there are actually workarounds.
• usescancodes=true is already set. If I change it to false, it gets worse - each of the keys that shows up as "Key unknown key" in the mapper types all of the characters assigned to any of them.
• I'd be very surprised if a third-party keyb.com solves it, considering that DOSBox itself is failing to save the keymappings properly and not accepting that my \ key (between left shift and Z) even exists.

I am no keyb / mapper wizard, but I think it is important to be clear in which context the keyboard mapping is wrong.

Is it at the DOSBox prompt?
Or is it when running a certain application?

Someone mentioned QBASIC?

It's throughout DOSBox, whether at the command prompt, within an application or in the keymapper UI.

Here's what happens. I go into the keymapper. Out of the box, all keys showed up as correctly mapped. However, if I try to assign the [ key on my keyboard, it appears in the UI as "Key unknown key", and if I try to assign the ] key, it appears as "Key [". Similarly, if I try to assign # (in the same place as \ is on a US keyboard), it appears as "Key ]". If I try assigning my \ key in the keymapper, it fails to register that any key has been pressed at all.

So the problem must be in the layer that processes the keystrokes (WM_KEYDOWN, etc. messages) and translates them to the codes that DOSBox uses internally.

I go into the keymapper

Don't do that. First of all you have to make the US layout working,
as everything relies on this.
Search the forum for windib and try some older sdl.dll

Don't do that. First of all you have to make the US layout working,
as everything relies on this.
Search the forum for windib and try some older sdl.dll

I tried older SDL files from 0.65 and 0.71. 0.71 is unchanged, but 0.65 won't work with 0.72, since it has some classes missing.

Maybe try setting SDL_VIDEODRIVER=windib (env var).

I have the same problem with my backslash key.

I'm at college with an Acer 5520 laptop (I miss my desktop! 🙁 ). I used to play DOS games in DOSbox all the time on my desktop, but the backslash key doesn't work on my stupid laptop! Can someone help me figure this out??

MiniMax wrote:

Is it at the DOSBox prompt?
Or is it when running a certain application?

Ok, I'm going to kill this thread once and for all. I believe, due to the fact that most of us are running Windows Vista, that it has to do something with the DOSBox's kyeboard function interaction with Vista. I'm guessing that nothing can fix it unless either an update from the DOSBox authors fix it, or a miracle happens when Vista SP1 comes out.

Neorave wrote:

...due to the fact that most of us are running Windows Vista...

Are you sure? Vista sucks for me. Just as W98ME did.

uhh.. vista? no. i'm running ubuntu. i would never be so stupid as to run vista.

did you read the newspost on dosbox.com ?

DOSgamerGirl wrote:

I have the same problem with my backslash key.

I'm at college with an Acer 5520 laptop (I miss my desktop! 🙁 ). I used to play DOS games in DOSbox all the time on my desktop, but the backslash key doesn't work on my stupid laptop! Can someone help me figure this out??

Why do you need the backslash key? Just use the normal slash sign ("/") instead of. 🤑