[PLUG-TALK] Hardware Question: Cursor In Constant Motion

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Mon Oct 29 22:05:36 UTC 2007


On Mon, 29 Oct 2007, Keith Lofstrom wrote:

> So ... it worked once upon a time (?) with Knoppix 3.6, and does not now,
> and worked with an earlier version of Ubuntu, and does not now, and the
> keyboard failed once before.

Keith,

   It worked with Slackware and Xubuntu, including the current version, until
Saturday morning.

> First, try looking at the CMOS BIOS settings

   OK.

> Next, try pulling the keyboard, blowing out any garbage, then reseating
> the flex connector.  Sometimes it is a bad connection.

   OK.

> If that doesn't work, the chip that does the keyboard control, on the
> laptop main board, may have gone flaky.  You may need a new laptop, and
> your old laptop is now your new firewall with builtin text screen and
> keybouard and battery backup.

   No, it will go to Free Geek -- minus the brand-new 70G/7200 RPM hard
drive.

> One fellow that has been helpful for Thinkpad problems is John Callahan
> (john at callahan.net or ebay at tpads-plus.com ) near Charlotte in N.C. He
> fixes lots of Thinkpads, and knows lots of symptoms and cures. You may end
> up sending the unit to him.

   Good to know. I did the keyboard replacement here, and Northwest Computer
Support did the LCD screen replacement.

> But I'm pretty close to stumped here. The earlier keyboard failure is
> worrysome, and the same things that break keyboards also break
> trackpoints.

   Well, the unit was about 6 years old then, so I don't ascribe major
concerns about the keyboard failing after that length of pretty steady use.

   I'll do more cleaning and checking.

Thanks very much,

Rich

-- 
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |    The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.        |         Accelerators(TM)
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>     Voice: 503-667-4517      Fax: 503-667-8863



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