Software-disabling touchpad

[Richard A. Smith]

> supposed to be able to disable the touchpad.
> If that's the case, is there a neater way to do that?

It obeys standard ps2 mouse commands.  Send the controller a 0xA7 and it will disable the output stream.

http://www.computer-engineering.org/ps2keyboard

The mouse is the "Auxillary PS/2 device interface"

Offhand I don't know the linux way of sending a command to the keyboard controller from userspace but Xwindows does it so its possible.
  
-- 
Richard A. Smith  <richard at laptop.org>
One Laptop per Child