Author: Victor Churchill Date: To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List Subject: [Hampshire] Stuck F1 key?
My laptop seems to have got its F1 key permanently stuck. Or rather,
it seems to be continuously generating a stream of key press events
that look to the system as if F1 is being repeatedly hit.
This seems to be a bit sporadic, not happening all the time but is
pretty disabling.
I get these characters everywhere from login onwards.
If I can get a terminal up and say 'od -b -' I see
^[OP^[OP^[OP ...
which is the bytes 033 117 120 033 117 120 ....
xev shows the following pair of events repeating very quickly (I am
copy typing only the 'relevant' bits):
KeyPress event, ... keycode 67 (keysym 0xffbe, F1) ...
KeyRelease event, ... keycode 67 (keysym 0xffbe, F1) ...
Of course everything on the desktop including the desktop itself
thinks F1 means Help!, so I am deluged with unwanted help windows,
dialogues, tabs.
I did not manage to find a KeyPressRepeat option in the BIOS to turn
off. Also, the key is still being generated at BIOS time - the BIOS
itself thinks I keep asking for help too!
( addendum: In fact there seem to be two different events that are
being seen, either one or the other, not both at once.
The second one shows as a series of 'A' characters appearing unbidden
at the shell prompt.
'od -b' shows that what us being received is actually a series of
'^[[[A' character sequences: 033 133 133 101 033 133 133 101... )
Do I have to assume my keyboard is broken, and can I do anything about
it? I'm a bit reluctant to procure and then try to fit a new keyboard
to the laptop.
