[G4] numeric keypad not working

Doug McNutt douglist at macnauchtan.com
Sat Feb 27 11:01:00 PST 2010


Does anyone know just where Apple OSs keep the status of the numlock  selection?

It appears that it's not stored inside either USB or ADB keyboards. The light bulb is totally controlled by the machine that the keyboard is connected to.

I have had somewhat similar problems with my G4 sawtooth (which can't go over 10.3.9 and still use my SE/30 fileserver). It wanted to open the door to the CD reader on each startup. But that finally went away and hasn't been seen for a while. It had to be a problem with some fipflop that got set accidentally.

How about resetting parameter RAM? On this 8500 that's done by holding down COMMAND OPTION P and R while pushing restart with your nose.

I assume that the daily, weekly, and monthly updates are current.

How about removing the USB keyboard in live mode and replugging it in while the computer is running. USB is designed for that and some flipflops might get reset only when starting live.

Starting up in single user mode would be worth a try. That would exercise the keyboard without all the things that OS neXt does for special interpretation of keys. Does the keypad work that way?

How about starting up with AppleJack?

What applications are involved? I can imagine an editing app that deliberately sets num-lock off to allow use of those editing keys the old way. If such an app crashed it might leave the setting that way while no other app is set up to return it to normal.

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