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mdlbearTwo trips to Fry's (the local geek emporium) today -- one of my coworkers calls it Fry'sDay because it's the day their 8-page weekend flier shows up in the newspaper. First trip was at 8am, to find a USB keyboard so we could fix ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chaoswolf's laptop.
Chaos reported the symptom (at about 11:30 last night) as "it only takes the first four characters of my password" -- but it would take other, garbage words just fine. The astute reader will no doubt have figured out the problem, but I had just gone to bed and had apparently left my wits on the nightstand along with my glasses. I was also confused by the previously-reported problem of a dead power-brick.
After establishing that, in fact, the power brick appeared to be OK (although the connector on the laptop side seemed to be dangerously wobbly, and could well have failed by being misaligned), I also discovered that it would only take the first character of her linux password. Huh? The astute reader will no doubt be laughing uproariously by this time.
Another reboot, a little more experimentation, and I finally figured it out: the "S" key wasn't working. Duh. We popped it off and looked for lint, but it still didn't work when we put it back. Then the other keys started failing. Verified (by logging in as
That's when I discovered that the damned machine had no PS2 ports. And of course there wasn't a USB keyboard anywhere in the house -- IBM stopped making the Model M a good many years ago.
So it was off to Fry's in the morning. Got a nice little BTC compact keyboard, not much bigger than the laptop's keyboard. Worked great. Homework printed, just in time.
Second trip was at noon, with the aforementioned coworker, to get a small Linux box to use as a portable server that JB could take with him on his upcoming vacation. Got a nice little shoebox system, but it didn't work when we put it together.
No video at all, strongly suggesting a mismatch between the CPU and motherboard. The stupid booklet isn't much help, of course, but I'm guessing that it won't handle the 2.4GHz chip we bought for it. Finding something slower may be difficult, which could have something to do with the fact that the box was about $100 cheaper than all the others on that shelf. The box wants a 100/133MHz system bus; the chip says it's 400/533. Should've known there was a catch to it.
chaoswolf's laptop. Chaos reported the symptom (at about 11:30 last night) as "it only takes the first four characters of my password" -- but it would take other, garbage words just fine. The astute reader will no doubt have figured out the problem, but I had just gone to bed and had apparently left my wits on the nightstand along with my glasses. I was also confused by the previously-reported problem of a dead power-brick.
After establishing that, in fact, the power brick appeared to be OK (although the connector on the laptop side seemed to be dangerously wobbly, and could well have failed by being misaligned), I also discovered that it would only take the first character of her linux password. Huh? The astute reader will no doubt be laughing uproariously by this time.
Another reboot, a little more experimentation, and I finally figured it out: the "S" key wasn't working. Duh. We popped it off and looked for lint, but it still didn't work when we put it back. Then the other keys started failing. Verified (by logging in as
guest, who doesn't have a password) that the power brick was still supplying AC, so we weren't talking about a failure caused by low voltage. By around 12:15am, the keyboard was solidly hosed.That's when I discovered that the damned machine had no PS2 ports. And of course there wasn't a USB keyboard anywhere in the house -- IBM stopped making the Model M a good many years ago.
So it was off to Fry's in the morning. Got a nice little BTC compact keyboard, not much bigger than the laptop's keyboard. Worked great. Homework printed, just in time.
Second trip was at noon, with the aforementioned coworker, to get a small Linux box to use as a portable server that JB could take with him on his upcoming vacation. Got a nice little shoebox system, but it didn't work when we put it together.
No video at all, strongly suggesting a mismatch between the CPU and motherboard. The stupid booklet isn't much help, of course, but I'm guessing that it won't handle the 2.4GHz chip we bought for it. Finding something slower may be difficult, which could have something to do with the fact that the box was about $100 cheaper than all the others on that shelf. The box wants a 100/133MHz system bus; the chip says it's 400/533. Should've known there was a catch to it.
