zeke@shamash.cdc.com (Robert Scott) (09/18/90)
Several weeks ago I posted about a problem with a recently purchased Northgate keyboard on my Mac IICi. Essentially, the keyboard wouldn't work at all, and a second keyboard (after an exchange at the local Northgate outlet store) behaved identically. I have resolved the problem with a visit to the engineers that design the ROMs for the Northgate keyboards, and the result is (thankfully) an easy answer. It seems that about 100 Macintosh ULTRA keyboards escaped through the quality assurance net at Northgate with the wrong ROM chips installed. In fact, the ROMs were for a standard PC XT/AT keyboard, and as such wouldn't work worth diddly on the Mac. The keyboard innards are exactly the same for the Mac as for the PC models, and just the skins, the ROMs, and a few keycaps are different. Fortunately, almost all of the 100 or so bad keyboards were distributed to the local (Minneapolis & St. Paul) outlet stores. This means that people who bought locally have probably got a working keyboard by now. I must say that the Northgate engineers were most helpful in finding this problem, and that Northgate has certainly held up its reputation for outstanding service in this matter. Just like any new product coming off a line, just a few bugs had to be worked out of the process, and the basic product itself wasn't to blame. Zeke "Congress was about to scuttle our defense department... Could our military industrial complex be backing Iraq?" - Kent Borg's Mother, 8-4-90 -- ~~~~~~~~~~~ From the Shrine of the "Last Gasp of ETA Systems" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Extra zesty disclaimer: MINE! MINE! ALL MINE! <chortle snort froth drool> Robert K. "Zeke" Scott internet: zeke@eta.cdc.com Control Data Corp, Supercomputer Support Group