My wife's Thinkpad T30 starting acting up - the E key stopped working,
and then it went into permanent enter key repeat mode.  "Fix it NOW",
she soothingly whispered.

So, I pulled the keyboard, did the keyboard tape trick, a distilled
water rinse, lintless towelling, and air dry.  I put the keyboard 
back, and put her laptop back into the docking cradle.  Same thing.

I swapped the keyboard with that of another T30.  Rebooted.  Same
thing.  Her keyboard worked on the other T30.   Not the keyboard.

I restarted and went into the BIOS - that worked, and the enter key
worked.  Later in the linux boot process, the repeats began.  My
goodness, could this be damaged software?

I pulled her T30 from the docking cradle - and the repeats stopped(!)

Checking the docking cradle, I found a expected USB cable to a USB
hub, which connects to her mouse and USB dictation headset.  The
cable appeared to loop under a stack of papers and books. 

Underneath the stack was the USB numeric extension pad she borrowed
to enter numbers for taxes, then forgot about.  The stack was resting
on the enter key.

I'm keeping the cleaned T30 keyboard.  She can clean the other one
if she wants.  And I'm hiding the numeric extension pad.  Fooey.

Lesson:  Always follow the wires.  You never know what you will find
on the other end.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          [email protected]         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs
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