Hi, Just before Christmas I was happy to receive 4 G1G1 laptops. I've already given one to a nephew (he loved it); I'm keeping one for myself for personal use and development; and the other two will go to another neice and nephew some time after update.1.
One of the laptops arrived with a keyboard problem, a 'sticky' alt key. (Once the alt key had been pressed once after boot, it appeared to stay pressed forever subsequently.) That laptop is presently in the RMA process. The keyboards on the other three laptops were fine when I received them. However, just yesterday evening, another keyboard problem has started on the machine I'm using myself. I noticed when using the vi editor that I could not type a 'd' character. In the terminal shell, I found that I could type a 'd' but only occasionally; 'c' and 's' also gave problems. So I rebooted the laptop and ran the boot diagnostics. The keyboard test showed what was happening: when the D key was pressed, it actually generated an 'alt-D' combination. Similarly, the S key generated alt-S and C generated alt-C; occasionally, X generated alt-X and the 'fn' key occasionally caused the alt key to press briefly. On a subsequent reboot and re-run of the keyboard test, I also saw the shift and Z keys occasionally generate an alt keypress. The laptop has not suffered any significant mechanical shocks. I carry it in my backpack, I've done a few joyride upgrades, and otherwise I just type, point, & click normally. (No pounding the keyboard in frustration, either!-) I'm wondering whether the OLPC community has any statistics indicating whether this sort of keyboard problem is infrequent enough to be easily manageable (in which case I just got unlucky), or if it is common enough to be a significant problem? Is there an understood mechanical or electrical weakness affecting some fraction (??%) of the XO keyboards? As a G1G1 donor, I still have the option of doing another RMA, but getting a replacement would presumably be a bit more problematic for the actual intended laptop recipients (the children of the world). Is this sort of keyboard problem the kind of thing where I could perhaps repair or replace the keyboard myself? Are there any maintenance/repair wiki pages that cover this yet? - Dan _______________________________________________ Olpc-open mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open
