Subject: LX keyboard trouble?
To: None <port-sparc@netbsd.org>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
List: port-sparc
Date: 03/17/2007 17:49:29
I've got a SS5 off in another city which I'd like to replace with an LX
(because the 5's framebuffer can't do anything over 1152x900 while the
LX has the VSIMM and can do 1280x1024, and I'd like to use it with a
flatscreen that's not really usable except at 1280x1024).

So I brought the LX over, transferred the data, and then moved the
keyboard and monitor over...and it didn't work.

On connecting to ttya on the LX, I found that the ROM code is giving
"no keyboard dewtected" messages on POST.  I found that by setting
input-device to "keyboard!" instead of "keyboard" I could override this
and make it take input from the keyboard, but when I do that it still
won't send output to the framebuffer.  keyboard! is a devalias for the
regular keyboard device with :forcemode appended, presumably meaning
"use it even if it looks broken", presumably for unattended boot
without a keyboard attached; I tried setting output-device to
/sbus/cgsix:forcemode, just in case it worked for framebuffers too, but
no joy.  I also tried turning off diag-switch?, in case it had some
kind of special-case effects, but that didn't help either.

It's not that there's something fundamentally broken with the keyboard
hardware on the LX; that LX worked with a keyboard at home, and I know
both the input hardware and output hardware are working, the input side
because keyboard input works if I use input-device=keyboard! with
output-device=ttya, the output side because I get the "I don't know
keyboard layout ff" message even upon warm reset, which means that it's
sending the "reset and send me your layout" command to the keyboard
successfully.  And the keyboard itself is good; I've switched it back
and forth between the LX and the 5 some five or ten times, am using it
right now, and it works fine on the 5.

The only thing I could think was that the LX doesn't like the type-3,
because the keyboard I want to use it with is a type-3 but the keyboard
that worked at home was a compact 5 (which I got with my Voyager).  But
then I remembered that my desk machine at work is an LX with a type-3
and it's always Just Worked, which leaves me without a plausible theory
for what could be causing the problems, and no ideas for making it
work.  (I can use keyboard! to make it take input from the keyboard,
but it still doesn't enable video output from the framebuffer - it may
well be sending output there that I just can't see, but that's not much
use.)

Anyone have any suggestions, thoughts, etc?

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