Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!pacbell.com!tandem!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Hardware problem in Software ?? Message-ID: <1990Dec5.021536.27771@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 5 Dec 90 02:15:36 GMT References: <1990Dec4.183634.3676@csc.anu.oz.au> <613@cbmger.UUCP> Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 30 peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY) writes: > myb100@csc.anu.oz.au writes: >>Amyway, sometimes on boot-up, my 'm' and 'n' keys don't work. 'Fine' everybody >>says - 'check your keyboard contacts'. Well, yes, that'd be my reaction too, >>except for this: There is no way to cheat in software to get the 'n' or 'm' to >>appear either. I used Snap to pick up a word containing an 'n', and when I >>put it down, the 'n' was gone !! >Well, I remember similar things from the very old days with an A1000 here. >But I fail to remember what we did against it. When such a thing happens >today to my Ami, then surely I had a terrible software running before >that destroyed some of the system RAM. (But I can't explain why it always >hits the 'm' and/or 'n' key, I experienced the same.) So, do you have >anything in your startup-sequence that could deliver such unpredictable >results? Oh, its not all that mysterious. The handling software for the keyboard thinks the left amiga key is pressed, and so it is interpreting the m and n keys as screen flip commands, which, with only one screen, are no-ops. Apparently the snap mechanism feeds the snapped text back in for insertion far enough up the keypress food chain that the same error hits the string being inserted. Warm booting always fixes it for me; sometimes bouncing up and down on the left amiga key works, too, but not often. Kent, the man from xanth.