Subj : Curious fault
To   : Peter Knapper
From : Mike Luther
Date : Mon Jun 20 2005 01:48 pm

Peter and Mark ..

 PK> Hi Marc,


 PK> When your system is operating normally, if you hold down CTRL and ALT 
 PK> keys, then double click on an icon, it should then 
 PK> open the Properties of that object instead of the 
 PK> object itself.

 PK> So it sounds like your Keyboard state is "confused" 
 PK> and needs to be "normalised" before things can return 
 PK> to normal. I find that pressing down and holding for 
 PK> about 2 seconds the CTRL key, then release it, then 
 PK> repeat this sequence for each (individually) of the 
 PK> ALT, LEFT SHIFT and RIGHT SHIFT keys, then things 
 PK> should return to normal.

 PK> Its been a long time since I experienced this but I think it may be 
 PK> related to running a DOS session where it "captures" 
 PK> the state of the Keyboard and "swallows" some 
 PK> keystrokes, causing it to think some state keys are 
 PK> down when they are not.

Somewhat confirmed..  It used to happen very frequently on my in-town BBS box 
with one OS/2 and one native DOS VDM BBS running at the same time togeter with 
my FTP server and yet another BBS an OS/2 telnet.

It stopped roughly when I presented a whole host of log data during what I 
recall was the move from MCP1 to MCP2, and as of, I think, when FP 16 was 
released for the older Warp boxes which was more synchronized to the later 
kernel and PMMERGE.DLL.  Way back then there were several keyboard drivers 
which went back and forth as to substitution and so on with IBM. After that, 
I've never seen this since.

At that time, and this is from FWB memory again, I could clear the mis-locked 
keyboard environment state by holding down the left CTRL and left SHIFT key and 
tapping the F2 function key repeatedly.  Then I would hold down the left CTRL 
key and left ALT key and wham F2 a couple times more as well.  Keyboard would 
return to normal.

Since FP 16 on Warp and FP 3, I think, on MCP1/2, I've never seen this again on 
many boxes and I run DOS-VDM's and comm port applications of them on many boxes 
at the same time as other work is going on.

The only thing which sniffs of things like this now is on a FP17 box with 
multiple OS/2 BBS operations, OS/2 radio TNC operations, and a simultaneous 
HyperHost phone line support application, the BINK/MAX native OS2 BBS will 
switch upper/lower case keyboard sensing even if there has been no contact with 
the BBS other than for external mailer/file support!  There is no way I can 
figure out to revert the keyboard state here back to normal other than to shut 
down the BINK OS/2 application and restart it .. either by HyperAcces via 
HyperHost to the site, or on-site manual work .. or by remotely doing a 
complete shutdown and reboot of the site.  It's the 1:117/3000 site, by the 
way.


--> Sleep well; OS/2's still awake! ;)

Mike @ 1:117/3001



--- Maximus/2 3.01
 * Origin: Ziplog Public Port (1:117/3001)

.