Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 14:59:36 +0900 From: Kazutaka YOKOTA <yokota@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp> To: Tony Overfield <tony@dell.com> Cc: bugs@freebsd.org, yokota@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp Subject: psm and kbdio driver (was Re: Stuck! 2.2 Gamma won't go.) Message-ID: <199702110559.OAA05547@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 10 Feb 1997 05:15:54 CST." <3.0.1.32.19970210051554.006a2350@bugs.us.dell.com> References: Your message of "Mon, 10 Feb 1997 02:28:48 CST." <3.0.1.32.19970210022848.00691d20@bugs.us.dell.com> <3.0.1.32.19970210051554.006a2350@bugs.us.dell.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>>Perhaps you could post details of this system's configuration >>(make & manufacturer) to -hackers and see if the 2 or 3 folk >>who deal with PS/2 mice can give you some clues as to what >>to do in debugging this so that they can make the PS/2 mouse >>driver less pathologically behaved on your equipment. > >I'm convinced it's not system specific. I'm using a new system >for which I did the BIOS. I'm also a maintainer of the 8042 >keyboard controller code (when necessary) but there hasn't been >a change to it in several years (millions of systems ago). Wow, I think I need advice from someone like you most to improve the PS/2 mouse driver (psm) and keyboard I/O routines (kbdio) :-) >The PS/2 mouse interface is certainly a strange one, but >most of the mystery surrounding it probably arises from the >poor documentation and poorly understood behavior. I could >help quite a bit if there's trouble getting it to work on >"good" system implementations. But I don't know about the >bugs that exist in other peoples' keyboard controllers, and >that's probably where most of the trouble is. > >The PS/2 mouse interface is *not* inherently buggy or >unreliable, but some of the implementations are. Indeed. Although I have tested the psm driver with a number of PS/2 mice (believe me, I have an army of them!), quite a few problems, particularly with laptops, have been uncovered since it was released to public testing. I can point a finger at a number of manufactures, including such big names as... >>Unfortunately, fixing it just takes as long as it takes with >>volunteers working on it. > >True. I do understand this. > >>In any case, there has been recent interest in improving this driver >>and the perpetrators hang out in -hackers, so you might do as I >>suggested above and see what happens. ;) > >I'll do that, depending on what Joerg says in response >to my other message. If I ask some qustions regarding the keyboard controller, would you be kind enough to answer them and assist me to improbe the psm and kbdio drivers? I really want several points clarified about the keyboard/mouse/i8042. Kazu PS. as for XF86Setup problems you are experiencing, I reproduced the problem on my system by deliberately specifying a wrong protocol type in the mouse selection menu in XF86Setup. XF86Setup doesn't respond to key stokes in some cases. But, I found that even in such cases the keyboard and mouse drivers appear to continue reading data from the devices and passing it to the Xserver all right. I will investigate the possibility that the XF86Setup (or the X server) may be unable to interpret key codes when it is confused about mouse events.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199702110559.OAA05547>