consult@osiris.UUCP (Unix Consultation Mailbox (Phil)) (12/22/88)
I've got a number of questions having to do with some features of my 3/50. They primarily have to do with the keyboard and the mouse, so shouldn't be too bad :-). Let me say right up front that I'm mostly a novice on these things, having only had one since June (and having had much less than full use of it up until the end of last month, but that's another story). The questions I've got are probably easy, I just can't find anyone who knows the answers. Keyboard #1: I find myself constantly having to retype or edit something I just tried to enter because the keyboard seemed to gag all of a sudden, emitting a very rapid succession of clicks and sending either nothing or a few completely impossible (as in "located nowhere near where my fingers were") characters. I've heard some other local 3/50 users complain about the same thing, but most of them haven't noticed it. Is this a known problem, or do we have broken keyboards? If the former, is there anything that can be done about it? #2: Is there any way to disable the two caps lock keys (F1 and Caps)? I'm getting pretty tired of hitting them "accidentally" and only finding out I did it when I completely trash a file I just spent half an hour editing. Half the time I can't even manage to get caps *un*locked with either F1 or Caps!! I went so far as to remove the keycaps once, only to discover that it can still happen (somehow), and that not having the keycaps on makes it quite impossible to undo. (How one of those keys could be pressed accidentally when I couldn't even manage to press one deliberately is confusing the hell out of me. I can only assume that something else is happening, but I have no clue what it could be.) [[ F1 is strictly handled by the Shelltool (or cmdtool). Hitting F1 causes the string "CAPS" (as I recall) to be added to the title bar. The CAPS key is handled by the console driver and can be disabled. There are a couple programs floating around that change your keymap so that CAPS doesn't do anything. --wnl ]] Mouse After all our Suns were upgraded to 4.0 just recently (that's another story that I won't get into now), I noticed that my rootmenu was a lot smaller. Not only narrower, but all the items on it were shorter (vertically speaking). I didn't think this would be a problem, but half the time I try to pick something out of the menu quickly, I wind up with the adjacent (above or below) item instead. This can be a real pain when I'm trying to lock my screen so I can catch the last bus out to the satellite parking facility and some mega-slow-starting program like iconedit comes over the ethernet instead. What I want to know is, am I the only Sun user who thinks there's a problem here? (I am at this site, anyway.) If not, what are the two of us (:-) going to do about it? If so, is there anything I can do about it myself (besides cutting down on my caffeine intake, which is not an option)? Phil Kos uunet!pyrdc!osiris!phil
jepeway@rastaban.cs.utk.edu (Chris Jepeway) (01/04/89)
consult@osiris.UUCP (Unix Consultation Mailbox (Phil)) writes: [Re: Sun 3 keyboards] > ...the keyboard seemed to gag all of a sudden, > emitting a very rapid succession of clicks and sending either nothing or a > few completely impossible (as in "located nowhere near where my fingers > were") characters. On 3/60's running 3.5, I've heard the keyboard emit keyclicks when I've been wailing away on it. I haven't seen it lose keystrokes, though the damn keyboard on the Sun 4 running 4.0 *does* lose characters and beeps most annoyingly when it cannot keep up with typeahead in just-plain-console mode (I mean when it's not running a window system). [[ I've had it lose a few keystrokes on me. Not very often, tho. --wnl ]] > Half the time I can't even manage to get caps *un*locked with either F1 or > Caps!! When running X11R2/3 on a 3/60 running 3.5, the CAPS key gets stuck quite frequently. A disaster if you're editting and haven't saved modified files when this happens. I don't know what to do other than kill the X that's running and start up another one. Since you're running suntools, I guess this is a problem with the keyboard/driver, instead of with X. Has anybody got a fix for it? Or some way, at least, to force the caps lock key to let go when it's stuck? > Phil Kos uunet!pyrdc!osiris!phil C. Jepeway jepeway@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu
klapper@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Carl Klapper) (01/11/89)
jepeway@rastaban.cs.utk.edu (Chris Jepeway) writes: > consult@osiris.UUCP (Unix Consultation Mailbox (Phil)) writes: > > Half the time I can't even manage to get caps *un*locked with either F1 or > > Caps!! > When running X11R2/3 on a 3/60 running 3.5, the CAPS key gets stuck quite > frequently...I don't know what to do other than kill the X that's running > and start up another one... Try pressing the shift keys simultaneously. It works here, though it sometimes takes a few tries. Carl Klapper Odyssey Research Associates, Inc. 301A Harris B. Dates Drive Ithaca, NY 14850 (607) 277-2020 klapper%oravax.uucp@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu
rta@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Rick Ace) (01/12/89)
jepeway@rastaban.cs.utk.edu (Chris Jepeway) writes: > consult@osiris.UUCP (Unix Consultation Mailbox (Phil)) writes: > [Re: Sun 3 keyboards] > > ...the keyboard seemed to gag all of a sudden, > > emitting a very rapid succession of clicks and sending either nothing or a > > few completely impossible (as in "located nowhere near where my fingers > > were") characters. > > On 3/60's running 3.5, I've heard the keyboard emit keyclicks when I've > been wailing away on it. I haven't seen it lose keystrokes, though the > damn keyboard on the Sun 4 running 4.0 *does* lose characters and beeps > most annoyingly when it cannot keep up with typeahead in > just-plain-console mode (I mean when it's not running a window system). > I have seen both problems. The first is rather rare, and I have not yet determined what circumstances cause it or how to reproduce it. The second (losing characters and beeping annoyingly) is easy to reproduce: you need SunOS 4.0 (I've seen it on both Sun-3 and Sun-4 gear). Do not use a window system, like Chris said. Just invoke csh and hit Return enough to get the cursor to the bottom of the screen. Then just hit Return rapid-fire and listen for the music. The problem appears to be peculiar to csh, as I've not been able to reproduce it while using /bin/sh, rlogin, etc. I reported this to Sun in November and received a reply in December acknowledging the existence of the problem (Sun Service Order # 241216). Nothing else yet. Rick Ace Pixar 3240 Kerner Blvd, San Rafael CA 94901 ...!{sun,ucbvax}!pixar!rta