Subject: PCVT - LED problem
To: None <frank@fwi.uva.nl>
From: Lucio de Re <lucio@proxima.alt.za>
List: tech-kern
Date: 12/14/1998 15:10:58
This has been bugging me for some time now, and I'm not sure that there 
isn't a simple answer, rather than me digging in the PCVT and kernel 
sources:

On my ASUS SP97-V PCs keyboard input is being lost for a few seconds 
(between five and ten, at a guess) whenever there may be cause to 
change the status of the keyboard LEDs.

This problem does not occur in NetBSD 1.1 (I'm still running that on my 
main server) and I think it reared its head in 1.2, although I cannot 
be sure; in fact, on second thoughts I believe I first encountered it 
in 1.3, I only installed 1.2.1 on a totally different machine.

The symptoms are quite obvious: on entering or leaving a VI or LESS 
session, as well as when switching virtual screens, no input is 
accepted for what seems an interminably long time.  There is no 
indication as to when the keyboard becomes responsive again and, as may 
be obvious, keystrokes in that period are lost.

The ASUS motherboard uses the SiS 5598 controller chip, whose 
datasheets can be downloaded from "www.sis.com.tw" (I don't have the 
full URL here, but it wasn't difficult to find) and, contrary to 
indications on the web site, the download does not require any 
identification or licence.  I have a copy, but the printing is taking 
some time, it is a large "wordpad" document.

Thanks to anyone that may be able to shed some light on the subject 
(Frank, your address is listed in the pcvt_conf.h sources, I hope you 
don't mind me singling you out :-)

++L