[comp.sys.mac.hardware] Another bizarre keyboard problem

gelphman@adobe.COM (David Gelphman) (07/28/90)

    I've had the following problem on my 1987 (vintage) Mac II:

Upon initial power up, about 1/2 the time the Mac doesn't seem to recognize 
the keyboard. I start up in MultiFinder with a few startup apps and once it
boots all the way up no characters can be entered from the keyboard.
If I reboot without power cycling (Restart from the Finder menu), it almost
always comes up OK the second time. 
	The other 1/2 of the time upon cold power up, it comes up OK.

	I haven't really done too much to figure out the problem. I haven't
reinstalled the system, removed inits, etc. It sure seems unlikely to me
that it is a software problem but is more likely a hardware problem. I
have fiddled with the ADB cables, etc. in order to see if that is the problem.
One interesting bit of information is that one time when the system was in
the state that it wouldn't recognize the keyboard I pulled up keycaps and
found that the system thought the command key was being held down. Typing
a letter from the keyboard to attempt to use a command key equivalent did
NOT work. I have never seen that particular state any other time, most
of the time the system didn't think any keys were down when I pulled down
keycaps.
	I'm sure there are plenty of debugging things I could do: borrow
a keyboard from work, etc. etc. I just thought someone else might have
seen the problem and know a fix.
David

roland@dna.lth.se (Roland Mansson) (08/04/90)

In article <4614@adobe.UUCP> gelphman@adobe.UUCP (David Gelphman) writes:
>Upon initial power up, about 1/2 the time the Mac doesn't seem to recognize 
>the keyboard. I start up in MultiFinder with a few startup apps and once it
>boots all the way up no characters can be entered from the keyboard.
>If I reboot without power cycling (Restart from the Finder menu), it almost
>always comes up OK the second time. 
>	The other 1/2 of the time upon cold power up, it comes up OK.

I've excatly  the same problem, also with a MacII. I use ADBProbe (a cdev)
to reset the ADB bus. It works, but is of course a little bit inconvinient...
-- 
Roland Mansson, Lund University Computing Center, Box 783, S220 07 Lund, Sweden
Phone: +46-46107436   Fax: +46-46138225   Bitnet: roland_m@seldc52
Internet: roland.mansson@ldc.lu.se   or   roland.mansson%ldc.lu.se@uunet.uu.net
UUCP: {uunet,mcvax}!sunic!ldc.lu.se!roland.mansson    AppleLink: SW0022

schaerer@gorgo.ifi.unizh.ch (08/14/90)

[David Gelphman and Roland Mansson write that their Mac II's often don't
recognize the keyboard at startup. Roland writes that resetting the ADB bus
helps.] [Sorry I'm late with my followup, our mail/news system was down.]

Please say more about your environment, maybe we can reconstruct this puzzle.
I have the same annoying problem on a Mac II, but, as far as I can remember,
*only since I installed System 6.0.5*. I haven't tried to reinstall 6.0.4 yet.

I use SilverLining 5.2, Tops 2.1, Suitcase II 1.2.6, ATM 1.01, and some more
stuff. The problem remained when I removed everything except Suitcase and Tops.

Resetting the ADB bus with a tool ADBProbe is not practical for me, because
I need the keyboard for entering a password before I can do anything else.

Thanks for any ideas.

Daniel Schaerer, University of Zurich/Switzerland
schaerer@ifi.unizh.ch

gelphman@adobe.COM (David Gelphman) (08/14/90)

In article <1990Aug13.192343.5613@gorgo.ifi.unizh.ch> Daniel Schaerer <schaerer@ifi.unizh.ch> writes:
>[David Gelphman and Roland Mansson write that their Mac II's often don't
>recognize the keyboard at startup. Roland writes that resetting the ADB bus
>helps.] [Sorry I'm late with my followup, our mail/news system was down.]
>
>Please say more about your environment, maybe we can reconstruct this puzzle.
>I have the same annoying problem on a Mac II, but, as far as I can remember,
>*only since I installed System 6.0.5*. I haven't tried to reinstall 6.0.4 yet.
   After seeing the message from Roland Mansson I got a copy of the ADB
probe cdev and indeed resetting the bus does solve the problem. Perhaps
some ADB sleuth'ers out there can help. I find that when the keyboard
is locked up and I bring up the ADB Probe cdev that the system thinks there
are 3 ADB devices, ID 0,2,3. When the keyboard is locked out the two of the
devices were listed as Type 1, and the 3rd was listed as Type 0. After
using the Reset function, I again had devices ID 0,2,3 but now instead
of two devices with ID =1, one of the devices which had ID 1 now had ID=2
so there were no ID 'conflicts'. 
   I took a peek at IM Vol V and didn't really see much about the Type
of device. Admittedly I didn't spend much time. I was surprised to see 
3 devices since I only have an extended keyboard and a mouse but I suppose
ADB may be like SCSI and the Mac itself may be a device. 
   More information about my system: vintage Mac II, A Roms, 5 Megs of 
memory, 68851 PMMU chip installed, extended keyboard, standard Apple mouse,
8 bit Apple video card, Color Monitor, internal Apple 40 Meg HD, external
Micropolis 140 Meg HD, Apple tilt and swivel monitor stand (sorry I couldn't
resist), modem and appletalk printer hooked up. Software: System 6.0.5 with
~15 inits. I don't believe the inits have much to do with this problem
but I'm sure somebody will prove me wrong.

One more question: the ADB probe Reset feature seems to solve the problem.
In looking at the ADB chapter in IM I noted there is an ADB Init procedure
available in ROM. It would be easy to write an INIT which just executed
this proc but I figure there is probably more to it than this? Ideas?
  
Thanks for any help,
David

taylor@cernvax.UUCP (bruce taylor) (08/15/90)

[In the referenced articles David Gelphman, Roland Mansson and Daniel
 Schaerer describe the problem of a Mac II failing to recognize its
 keyboard after about 50% of startups].

I have a Mac II which also exhibits this behaviour.  It also started around
the time I installed 6.0.5, but I would have changed plenty other things the
same day.  I don't have the ADBProbe cdev (where do I get that, folks?) so
I ran the ADBLister application I found on the Discy Business CD. This gives
the following repeatable result:

After an OK startup -

  Mouse
  Device = 2;  Device type = 1
  ADB Address = 3;  Original Address = 3

  Apple Extended KeyBoard                        Right...
  Device = 1;  Device type = 2
  ADB Address = 2;  Original Address = 2

After a startup with keyboard dead -

  Apple Standard Keyboard                        Hmm...
  Device = 2;  Device type = 1
  ADB Address = 2;  Original Address = 2

  Mouse
  Device = 1;  Device type = 1
  ADB Address = 3;  Original Address = 3

The keyboard is the extended model.  This Mac II has B ROMs.  I don't have
David's fancy monitor stand but I do have a nice blue mousepad :-)

Bruce

magorian@umd5.umd.edu (Dan Magorian) (08/16/90)

[In the referenced articles David Gelphman, Roland Mansson and Daniel
 Schaerer describe the problem of a Mac II failing to recognize its
 keyboard after about 50% of startups].

I had this problem as well, numerous times.  Last night I noticed that both
machines doing it were attempting to boot first from an external disk that 
once had a system folder on it (boot blocks set), failing, and switching
to the internal disk with the right blessed folder.  When I set the Set
Startup CDEV to the right disk, and stopped the partial switch booting, the
problem stopped (so far).  Interestingly, the ex-System Folder was System 7.
Could this be other people's problem as well?

-- 
Dan Magorian                                                    (301) 405-3004
Computer Science Center                                    magorian@ni.umd.edu
University of Maryland                                    magorian@umdd.bitnet
College Park, MD 20742-2411                                   Applelink: A0190

taylor@cernvax.UUCP (bruce taylor) (08/16/90)

In article <7116@umd5.umd.edu> magorian@umd5.umd.edu (Dan Magorian) writes:

>[In the referenced articles David Gelphman, Roland Mansson and Daniel
> Schaerer describe the problem of a Mac II failing to recognize its
> keyboard after about 50% of startups].
>
>I had this problem as well, numerous times.  Last night I noticed that both
>machines doing it were attempting to boot first from an external disk that 
>once had a system folder on it (boot blocks set), failing, and switching
>to the internal disk with the right blessed folder.  When I set the Set
>Startup CDEV to the right disk, and stopped the partial switch booting, the
>problem stopped (so far).  Interestingly, the ex-System Folder was System 7.
>Could this be other people's problem as well?

Good sleuthing, Dan.  In my case the Startup CDEV was set correctly to an
internal HD40, but an external HD80 still carried a Finder Startup file left
over from the days when it had its own System.  Trashing the superfluous
file cured the keyboard problem.  Although the file must have been on the
HD80 for a long time, it does appear that the problem only manifested itself
when the HD40 System Software was updated to 6.0.5.

Many thanks,
	      Bruce Taylor

tecot@momenta (Ed Tecot) (08/17/90)

taylor@cernvax.UUCP (bruce taylor) writes:
>After an OK startup -

>  Mouse
>  Device = 2;  Device type = 1
>  ADB Address = 3;  Original Address = 3

>  Apple Extended KeyBoard                        Right...
>  Device = 1;  Device type = 2
>  ADB Address = 2;  Original Address = 2

>After a startup with keyboard dead -

>  Apple Standard Keyboard                        Hmm...
>  Device = 2;  Device type = 1
>  ADB Address = 2;  Original Address = 2

>  Mouse
>  Device = 1;  Device type = 1
>  ADB Address = 3;  Original Address = 3

What's going on here is that your keyboard failed to respond to a query
when the machine was booted.  Apparently, there's a faulty connection
between the keyboard and the machine.  The next time this happens,

1) Try disconnecting and reconnecting the keyboard.
	and if that fails
2) Try a different keyboard.

Note that your LEDs won't work until you reboot, so don't use that as
a way to test the keyboard.

If 1) solves your problem, you might want to check your cables.  Look
at the pins, and if possible, swap with someone for a while.  If 2)
solves your problem - you may have a less-than-perfect keyboard.

						_emt

mosemann@hoss.unl.edu (Russell Mosemann) (08/19/90)

In <1990Aug16.200910.22861@momenta> tecot@momenta (Ed Tecot) writes:

[Original problem deleted]

>What's going on here is that your keyboard failed to respond to a query
>when the machine was booted.  Apparently, there's a faulty connection
>between the keyboard and the machine.  The next time this happens,

>1) Try disconnecting and reconnecting the keyboard.
>	and if that fails

[Rest deleted]

   Of course, disconnect and reconnect after the power is shut off.
Otherwise you run the risk of frying your ADB chip, something a little
more serious than an occassional unrecognized keyboard.

Russell
mosemann@hoss.unl.edu
uunet!hoss.unl.edu!mosemann