FC 5 : Keyboard runs crazy

[belgianfool]

Hello, help needed :

I'm trying to install FC 5 (CDs Bordeau) as dual boot with XP on an Amd K6, 256 RAM.
As soon as the graphical screen starts, the keyboard keeps repeating the letter : I type 'ab' and it displays 'aaaaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbbbb'. Impossible to master the thing.
I tried several keyboards, all in ps/2, none works better (I mean the physical keyboard).
My language is French, but I tried several keyboard declarations, also USA Intern., nothing changes. Impossible to change the label "Other" to "WIndows" for Grub, just as impossible to type a root password.

By the way, I also tried to change the typematic range in the bios, it's also useless.

Worse, I tried a "Linux text" install and it freezes after package selection, when I say freezes, I mean of course more than 20 minutes, so it's not package dependance check.
Otherwise, in text mode, the keyboard works perfectly (my setting should be BE-Latin1).

I suspect there's a hardware incompatibility somewhere, but what ?

[belgianfool]

More info :
I could at end manage to install it, with password "xxxxxx", type twice "x", got six of them.
Login and environment after reboot still suffer the same problem, type "a" and got "aaaaaaaaaaa".
So, it's a real hardware incompatibility... anybody has some idea ?

[moft]

I run an AMD Turionx2 1.6gz Presario v3000 laptop with 512ram.

I installed FedoraCore 5 perfectly in XP on VMware assigning it a single processor.
I then stupidly shutdown the VM and turned the available processors to 2.
Then it booted right up until the blue screen before the splash comes up, when it froze.

So I deleted the VM and started again, this time installing with 2 processors assigned (figured it needed SMP packages). Installed fine.

Then I got to the username and password screen and started getting ttttthhhhiiiiiissss.

Deleted that one, and tried again, to no avail.

I'm about to try it out with a single processor again - will report back on le status.

Also, I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it, but the two times I retried with 2xcores i installed KDE instead on Gnome.

I don't think this is a hardware thing - if anything hardware it's got to be the dual-core factor.

belgianfool, please leave your specs!

[moft]

sorry belgianfool - you had left your specs

So I managed to just type in the username and password really quick and delete any extra digits (except when backspace goes silly).

It boots - I can type in the username and password no probs at this stage

Then it goes to Gnome (btw I installed both G' and KDE). Mouse moves, but does nothing - keyboard does nothing too.

KDE sorta works, but I get "KDesktop crashed and caused the Signal 11 (SIGSEGV)." from the crash handler after a short while

I used to get an error in VMware (not anymore as I dismissed it permanently - the problem is still there) about updating my bios as it contains invalid NUMA information. The result of not fixing it would be a virtual clock which will speed up or slow down according to the CPU's power and speed throttling (on a turion64x2) causing erratic behaviour in some VMs.

The reason I believe it to be this NUMA thing is that the computer could be thinking that the 1/4-second that you normally hold the keys down for one stroke, is 2.5 seconds or so, putting the 'right' amount of letters in for the duration pressed.

Maybe the problem we're having is old BIOS'es that aren't designed to handle the way apps/OSes are using multi-core or x64 processors (i've heard AMD have some bugs in their x64 chips -can anyone shed some light on this?)

[belgianfool]

Well I'm still interested in getting a working solution to this problem.
Right now, I'm back in FC 4 that runs fine. In fact, my main interest in FC now is to have models for translations of applications in different languages. So it's not on my main machine that already uses 3 Windows brands (ME/2000/XP), and the older pc's that I use for Linux have K6/2 at 500 Mhz (bios 1998) and K7 at 1500 Mhz (bios 2001) Amd CPU's.

Now I noticed that with those 2 pc's, the Gnome startup fails to recognise the onboard sound system AC'97 (not working very well under Windews either) on the K7 machine and also the other one (Crystal WDM MPU 401) on the K6/2 machine. I believe this keyboard problem could have something to do with this non recognition of sound system, some important part of Gnome being uninitialized.

I also made some more experiments : with FC 6 the problem is exactly the same and moreover my monitor gets in over-range state as soon as Gnome starts. Then an interesting more mystery : I tried out the Ubuntu 6 distribution (a one CD distribution) ... and it works perfectly well in "Live" mode, that is running without install from the CD only... and as soon as I try to install it, the tttthhhhhhhiiiiiisssss problem pop up again...

By the way, my keyboard is a BE-Latin-1, that is a close relative from french Azerty (as oposed to Qwerty) keyboard. But I don't believe this is a plain keyboard - hardware problem because I tried out all my 5 keyboards here at home and they all fail the test. Besides, there are lots of people asking the same question in french and english forums, so this is unlikely that we all have keyboards that are damaged in the same way...

Now FC 4 runs fine for me, and I expect to rotate my machines by getting a new pc for Vista in about 6 months and so install FC 6 with a newer machine and better monitor, but if I could fix the problem now, I'd be happy to switch to FC 6 right now, so if you get the solution, please let me know...

[u-noneinc-s]

I'm not familiar with all of the kernel options. Perhaps there is one to disable keyboard repeat.
Unfortunately I don't know what it would be (if there is one), but it is something to look into.

[u-noneinc-s]

This link pertains to FC5 but might be worth looking at.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=480014

[belgianfool]

Hi, now I intalled FC 6 in a VMWare box running from Windows XP (with my main Athlon machine) and everything runs fine. Not a single problem, it also solved my over rate problem with the monitor...