#5658 NORM Ship.2: Sticky Alt Key

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#5658: Sticky Alt Key
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  Reporter:  davidpfarrell  |       Owner:  holt     
      Type:  defect         |      Status:  reopened 
  Priority:  normal         |   Milestone:  Ship.2   
 Component:  hardware       |     Version:  Build 650
Resolution:                 |    Keywords:           
  Verified:  0              |    Blocking:           
 Blockedby:                 |  
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Comment(by frankprindle):

 Add me to the list - for the first several days, no problem. Then it
 happened once and went away on reboot. Kept getting worse. Now it's almost
 constant, and getting worse by the hour.

 I ran the keyboard test and, most commonly, the Alt key comes on by itself
 when another key is pressed. Sometimes it stays on, sometimes it is just
 on for that key press. I also occasionally see other keys stick after
 pressing them, for example the 'k' and the space bar; pressing the key
 again releases the stick. Pressing the Alt key itself makes the stuck key
 go away for a brief time, but it always seems to come back.

 The fact that it is getting much worse with time indicates to me that it
 is a hardware issue, though perhaps not one with the keys, but rather with
 the keyboard controller, connectors, or cable. It is not likely that
 pressing another key is actually causing the Alt key to close, though I
 really have no idea what the keyboard technology is. The Commodore 64 had
 an unusual resistive-rubber setup, where pressing a key made contact
 through the rubber.

 What in the world are they going to do if ALL the G1G1's eventually
 develop this problem? Yikes!

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/5658#comment:15>
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