On 2005-07-04 smb@cs.columbia.edu wrote:

> Late last night, I noticed a bit more.  The failures seem to be
> correlated with switching to a text console.  When I do that, I noticed
> the light on a (PS/2) mouse going off, which I assume means that the
> device is being closed and power to it turned off.  This keyboard has
> two mouse-equivalents, plus two sets of buttons that I'm using via
> usbhidaction.  I assume -- I haven't looked at the source yet -- that
> the mice-equivalents are closed (powered down?) when I switch to a text
> console; might there be a problem with reopening the mice when the
> keyboard is already open?
>
> I'm not yet 100% certain of the phenomenon; I reached that tentative
> conclusion pretty late, and each try requires a full reboot into X
> because I can't recover once things stall.

  This sounds exactly like the problem I had with this keyboard, as
reported in kern/23819 (I thought it might be related to the main problem
of the PR at first, but it isn't).  Apparently the keyboard uses a broken
USB client chip that babbles if it receives info before being opened. The
problem occurs when starting or switching to X if the mouse is touched
outside X.  The USB HC we both have shuts down incorrectly from the babble
and NetBSD doesn't have code to restart it (if you have more than two USB
ports, plugging it in to one of a different pair will get it working again
until it babbles there).  The references in the PR have more info.

  I also noticed that there are interaction issues between the two mice,
which the supplied windows driver corrects.  IIRC, I would see the cursor
drift a considerable distance if I accidently bumped the pad while using
the eraser. I have not had a chance to look into that yet, but since I
just wanted the eraser I was going to try to fix that problem by not
attaching the other mouse.  I will probably just sell it instead (if
anyone here wants one, let me know).  This kind of hardware problem is
very disappointing in a $100 keyboard, and hopefully it will be the last
IBM product I buy (as much as I like those eraser mice).

Matthew Orgass
darkstar@city-net.com