jpdres13@usl-pc.UUCP (John Joubert) (02/06/88)
-------------------------------- Eeeeeargh! Last night while computing away I had the wierdest thing happen, my keyboard just started sending a stacatto rush of keypresses to the computer and my mouse locked up. The minute I turn on my 1040ST I hear the sound of a key repeat, it does not let up at all unless I happen to stick in a disk that has a desktop.inf file that wants to access a window on drive b and I have drive b turned off. I get presented with an alert box that says "Insert disk B in drive A" , you know, you have all seen this one. Anyway ... the sound stops and the mouse is frozen, I cannot even hit return to bump the default "ok" exit button in that alert box. In this state I wait for some advice from the experienced users of the net. I suspect the keyboard controller chip, since polling the keyboard and the mouse can be done with event_keybd(). If you have any experience with this problem , please let me know about it and any solutions that you might suggest. I think that I will try to reseat some chips tonight, as that seems to be a popular fix suggestion from Neil Harris. Incidentally I have 1040ST #000000054, or , number 54 in the first batch of 1040's out , in case anyone knows of such a quirk in an early series model. Thanks for any help you can offer. John ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Joubert | /\ | /\ | _ jpdres13@usl-pc.USL | \|<>|>|> \|<>|>|><`|`| or ... |-----/|-------/|----------------------- ut-sally!usl-pc!jpdres13 | \/ \/ -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
jpdres13@usl-pc.UUCP (John Joubert) (02/07/88)
----------------------- In response to my own earlier plea for help, I have found that the reason for the keyboard & mouse lock up was, sure enough, loose chips. I opened the 1040, went under the drive & pushed down on all the chips. One of the two 24 pin chips next to the sound chip was not seated all the way down. I looked up the chip in an "Internals (Abacus)" book and sure enough, it was the chip for the keyboard, mouse, & timer. Better yet, I am once again breathing normally, pulse rate near normal, brew in hand, and everything is working normally. I wonder if this has anything to do with the snow that hit the deep South of Louisiana last night for the first time since 1973? Maybe the change in barometric pressure popped that chip up just a tad... And if I would have had a computer in 1973 (Altair dreams?), it would have popped up a chip also? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Joubert | /\ | /\ | _ jpdres13@usl-pc.USL | \|<>|>|> \|<>|>|><`|`| or ... |-----/|-------/|----------------------- ut-sally!usl-pc!jpdres13 | \/ \/ -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
hase@netmbx.UUCP (Hartmut Semken) (02/14/88)
Frozen keyboard? Here is my defroster: When I put my ST in a PC-housing (1 year ago) I wanted to have a long keyboard cable. Because this cable wasn't shielded in version 1 I had the same problem; sometimes the keyboard processor ran into nirwana. I cut the RESET line that connects ST and keyboard reset, put a RC-combination into the keyboard (1 kOhms to +5V, 1 Microfarads to ground) and gave both a reset button. This will cause some new problems that can be solved by a switch. If Your keyboard is locked, disconnect motherboard and keyboard reset, reset the keyboard and connect them again. Work whithout trouble for 10 month now. hase -- Hartmut Semken, Berlin (West) (*east of West-Germany :-) hase@netmbx.UUCP answer: 42 question: under development. Stay tuned.