Discussion
Dammit.
During a fine evening of brandy, cigars and cossacks - the art of war (multiplayer over a wifi lan), my laptop decided to go insane.
It's a venerable PII-400 Toshiba Tecra, but has served me well.
It appears that the keyboard interface chip has gone mad, as some of the keys work, some give odd characters, and some don't work at all.
Plugging in an external keyboard doesn't help either.
Now, I'm well aware it's an old machine, but it does what I want and I'm lothe to bin good hardware for a silly fault.
I'm going to strip the bugger down tomorrow to see if it's anything mechanical, but assuming it isn't, does anyone know anywhere decent that could take a look and give me an honest appraisal. If it's 50 quid for a new keyboard/chip it's worth doing.
If it's 300 quid for a new motherboard (entirely possible) then it's bin time......
Cheers in advance....
During a fine evening of brandy, cigars and cossacks - the art of war (multiplayer over a wifi lan), my laptop decided to go insane.
It's a venerable PII-400 Toshiba Tecra, but has served me well.
It appears that the keyboard interface chip has gone mad, as some of the keys work, some give odd characters, and some don't work at all.
Plugging in an external keyboard doesn't help either.
Now, I'm well aware it's an old machine, but it does what I want and I'm lothe to bin good hardware for a silly fault.
I'm going to strip the bugger down tomorrow to see if it's anything mechanical, but assuming it isn't, does anyone know anywhere decent that could take a look and give me an honest appraisal. If it's 50 quid for a new keyboard/chip it's worth doing.
If it's 300 quid for a new motherboard (entirely possible) then it's bin time......
Cheers in advance....
Mr E said:
It appears that the keyboard interface chip has gone mad, as some of the keys work, some give odd characters, and some don't work at all.
Not much help but i had a similar problem with my old desktop PC running Win98 and it just sorted itself out.
See... told ya it wasn't much help
Try and reinstall the region setting as the file maybe currupt, also try and use a usb keyboard not a PS2 one as this uses its own set of drivers.
You may have done this already but boot up in dos mode with floppy disc and check that it is a hardware fault by trying the keys in dos mode.
Hope this helps out a little
steve
You may have done this already but boot up in dos mode with floppy disc and check that it is a hardware fault by trying the keys in dos mode.
Hope this helps out a little
steve
Good idea about the USB k/board. I'll try that.
Still. I consoled myself today with the most expensive box of CD-Rs ever.
Went in wanting to buy 25 blank discs. Came out with 25 blank disks, a disk box, a 19" screen and a AMD XP3200 with 512Meg of RAM, 160Gig of drive space and a 256meg DDR graphics card (it's only a FX5200, but it seems quick enough).
Whoops.
Still. I consoled myself today with the most expensive box of CD-Rs ever.
Went in wanting to buy 25 blank discs. Came out with 25 blank disks, a disk box, a 19" screen and a AMD XP3200 with 512Meg of RAM, 160Gig of drive space and a 256meg DDR graphics card (it's only a FX5200, but it seems quick enough).
Whoops.
If its an 8000, a new keyboard is about 40 quid. It might be a sticking key that even affects an external 'board.
I had this happend on my old 8000....new keyboard sorted it. Its a 5 minute job to replace.
You might even want to remove the old keyboard and rinse it - might be full of dust / crumbs.
I had this happend on my old 8000....new keyboard sorted it. Its a 5 minute job to replace.
You might even want to remove the old keyboard and rinse it - might be full of dust / crumbs.
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