The 4 "favorite" keys are equally useless, and I don't think those can be mapped to other functions in *any* mode unless there's some special tweak I haven't found on any of the 15-1994 hacking sites.

I haven't had any trouble programming any key on the 1994, including those four. With some of the new protocols and stuff pioneered by Nicola, the sky is the limit on programming that thing. The only two buttons I couldn't do anything with were the SCAN and SWAP keys, and I took care of those with this hack. And that hack was done over a year ago, I'll bet that by now you can do that sort of thing in software.

There's a mailing list, under Yahoo Groups, called "JP1". If there's anything you want to do with a 1994, the folks there will help you do it. Indispensible information there, check it out.