Subject: Re: -advocacy mailing list (was: Re: Advanced Routing)
To: Peter Seebach <seebs@plethora.net>
From: Herb Peyerl <hpeyerl@beer.org>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 03/21/2002 13:03:10
seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach)  wrote:
 > In message <Pine.GSO.4.33.0203211326420.14903-100000@math.rice.edu>, Richard Ra
 > uch writes:
 > >Having said that, Thomas Muellar raised some technical points about his
 > >attempt to install and run NetBSD.  What could have caused the keyboard
 > >handling problem that he experienced?
 > 
 > I had some keyboard problems on one motherboard with a VIA chipset.  Every
 > boot, the first key you hit would repeat until you unplugged the keyboard
 > and plugged it back in.  Then it was fine.  Happened with several keyboards.
 > 

Electrically, this happens when the keyboard clock line is  being
held low by the  keyboard itself.  If the cpu inside the keyboard
doesn't come out of reset for some reason or has some sort of fault,
then the clock line may get pulled down.

An axe needs to find sleeping, the person(s) who designed the PC 
keyboard interface and "protocol".  "You spec'd 5 pins. Why are
you only using 3 to implement a bi-directional protocol you festering
excuse for an engineer."