Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!ljdickey
From: ljdickey@watmath.waterloo.edu (L.J.Dickey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Phantom typist and Timedrv5 (Was: 1st Word Plus)
Message-ID: <1990Dec18.050211.21559@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 18 Dec 90 05:02:11 GMT
References: <5440139@hplsla.HP.COM> <1990Dec17.011913.25150@watmath.waterloo.edu> <6529@vice.ICO.TEK.COM> <1990Dec17.180351.6466@ecst.csuchico.edu>
Organization: University of Waterloo
Lines: 32

In article <1990Dec17.180351.6466@ecst.csuchico.edu>
	ekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu (Ed Krimen) writes:
>keithr@vice.ICO.TEK.COM (Keith Rast) writes:
> ... 
>This is called the 'Phantom Typist.'  This is a bug with the ST.  No 
>one knows what kind though.  It could be TOS, it could be something
>else.  It happens not only with First Word Plus, but other word
>processors as well.  Atari won't consider it a bug, unless someone can
>reproduce it at will.  Until someone can make it appear on purpose,
>it will still remain uncatchable.

I had not seen the Phantom Typist for quite some time.  But recently I
saw that there was a new version of Time-Drive, so I installed
"timedrv5.prg".  Within 10 minutes, I found keys that got stuck "on".
One that got stuck in the on position was the "ESC" key.  Things still
worked, while the speaker chirped continuiningly.  It was almost by
accident that I discovered it was the ESC key.  What did it for me was
that I was logged in to a unix system at the time and was using a
terminal emulator program talking to to a system that that showed the
control characters that were coming in to the system.   (For UNIX
buffs, I think it was " cat -v ". ) Just pressing the ESC key once
stopped the problem!   Over the next hour or so, this happened several
times, so I disabled timedriv5 by changing the extender ".prg" to
".prx".  and re-booting the system.  Of course next time I booted up,
the time and drive indicator was not there, but the key chirp hasn't
come back either.

I hope this helps and that I don't get somebody's nose out of joint.
My comments are make in the hope that we can isolate and anihilate
this bug.

Lee Dickey