On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 10:21:54PM -0500, Mike Simons wrote: > On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 05:17:19PM -0800, Robin Snyder wrote: > > > It is plugged in and getting some kind of data. (The receiver box > > lights up.) I shut down X using ctrl-alt-backspace. No go. I even tried > > rebooting, in case ctrl-alt-backspace didn't shut enough processes down. > > (I don't think it does. Had to reboot to get the Mouseman working again.) > [...] > > What am I missing? (And can I do this without rebooting?) > > PS/2 style devices are not supposed to be reconnected while the machine > is live. I don't know the details but I've often seen PS/2 style > devices not operate correctly or at all when they are unplugged and > re-plugged in. I've read that it's possible to fry the motherboard > controller chip for the PS/2 port by hot-swapping devices.
I've done it. I was working on an older Pentium-class system, and the keyboard stopped working. It was still passing packets, though, so I figured the keyboard plug had come loose. I pushed it back in, and voila: the machine stopped passing packets. Froze up hard, and never booted again. -- Samuel Merritt OpenPGP key is at http://meat.andcheese.org/~spam/spam_at_andcheese_dot_org.asc Information about PGP can be found at http://www.mindspring.com/~aegreene/pgp/
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