[conspire] (forw) Re: Testing New Keyboard

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2015 11:38:33 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: "Robert S. Johnstone" <rsjohnst at idiom.com>
Cc: danagoyette at gmail.com
Subject: Re: Testing New Keyboard
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting Robert S. Johnstone (rsjohnst at idiom.com):

> I would like to bring the keyboard to the Installfest on 27 June
> and see if it works or fails on another (presumably well-managed)
> Linux system.

That sounds like a good cross check, I suppose.

Honestly, the symptoms you report are perplexing, because keyboards
simply are not, in my long experience, OS-sensitive.  You report that
the new keyboard tests OK and functions on a (presumably MS-Windows)
test machine at Fry's Electronics but not on an Ubuntu box on which the
old keyboard does work.  I believe you, but the set of facts seem
incongruous.

As I believe I mentioned earlier, with a suitable motherboard BIOS
(i.e., most such BIOSes), it's easy to do some amount of no-OS testing
of the keyboard -- in the sense that you can verify that the BIOS
registers various function-key keystrokes, cursor-movement / direction
keystrokes (e.g., down-arrow), and in some cases entry and display of
password keystrokes.

As a general principle of diagnosis, it is often extremely useful to
start with simplified test scenarios to reduce the number of variables
at play, and the no-OS test scenario of determining inside the
motherboard BIOS Setup routine whether the keyboard basically functions
or not is a classic case in point:  If one can use the keyboard to
navigate around and interact with the motherboard BIOS Setup program,
then you should have high confidence that the motherboard is a
known-good component.

At the risk of repetition, in my experience, all known-good keyboards of
an interconnect class (PS/2, USB, the long-obsolete AT keyboard
standard, and the equally long-obsolete Apple Localtalk standard, for
example) are totally interchangeable, with the very minor exception of
some keyboards including odd and unusual keys not found in others, e.g.,
keyboards whose function keys go up to F14 and not just F10.  With that
very minor exception, all (e.g.) USB keyboards are totally fungible, and
any OS that successfully intercepts and processes one example USB
keyboard can be relied upon to intercept and process all other USB
keyboards.


One other cross-check that one can do:  Test-boot live CD or DVDs.  This
is an obvious way to get around your limitation of 'I have only one
computer running Linux'.  Well, yes, you do, but it can run,
consecutively, a large variety of Linux distributions booted from
optical media without overwriting your OS installation.  If you new
keyboard works on some live-CD Linux distributions but not others, that
would support your supposition that there's something wrong with the
installed Ubuntu installation.  In the alternative, if every single live
CD fails to register the new keyboard's keystrokes, that would suggest
that the problem lies in the keyboard.

We'll look forward to seeing you.


----- End forwarded message -----