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Date:      Tue, 25 Sep 2001 23:02:16 -0400
From:      parv <parv_@yahoo.com>
To:        f-mobile <freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org>
Subject:   (short story) dell inspiron 5000e & panic inducing keyboard loss
Message-ID:  <20010925230216.A32360@moo.holy.cow>

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has anybody experienced a temporary loss of keyboard on a laptop?
i did. this is my story (sorry dick wolf).


yesterday night while i had been trying to beat my own score of 
xpuzzletama on my dell i5000e, the keyboard suddenly stopped 
working.

first i thought that might be due to load (port(s) were being compiled)
and thus system was just unresponsive. but after waiting for load to go
to negligible, keyboard wasn't still responding but mouse was...

...that's when i panicked. i was in pain just at the thought of sending
computer for repairs as it is about/only <9 months old. 

the laptop, bottom right front-to-middle part, was quite warm/hot in
part due to software make'ing, and perhaps in part due to being used 
for about 6 hours lying flat on heavy carpet.

after quitting X, keyboard was still unresponsive on console. it was
so even after 2 reboots. there was nothing unusual in kernel messages 
flying by in general, and related to "kbd" in particular...

...that's when even worse thoughts came to mind.

i (hard) shut down the computer 3d time. flipped it upside down;
"burped" it while holding w/ one hand; hit the keyboard, gently, to
un-lodge if anything was lodged; waited for it cool down.

after some passage of time, i tried to boot in windows me. mind you 
i had to press F1 as F2 was the default choice before. lo and behold!
keyboard started responding. i quickly shut down windows and changed 
the devices that bios would to boot. put the "internal hard drive" from
1st position to "3d", after "floppy drive" and "cd drive".

after fiddling w/ windows, i closed the computer & waited for next
morning to experiment w/ freebsd... if necessary. and, when i tried in
freebsd again, system behaved as if there were no problems... fsck run
not withstanding.

-- 


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