Help! my Northgate keyboard is acting weird!

[Matt L]

I've had a Northgate Omnikey Evolution Keyboard for some time, since I read about it here. It's been great but yesterday the middle row of key started acting up. the "a" is now a space, "s" and "L" are "a", and the rest of the middle row seems to be shifted by one letter. What happened? Can I fix it?

I thought I might have a virus, and did, but the keyboard does the same thing on any of my other computers, so it's hardware. I did a search and found the keyboard going for $200.00 now so replacing it is not an option. Love the feel and the layout, I really want to keep the keyboard.

 

[skriefal]

You could try holding down the ESC key while booting the computer. That'll reset the keyboard programming/mapping on some of the Northgate keyboards. Some of the others can be reset by hitting the Ctrl-Alt-Suspend Macro keypress sequence. If neither of those work, then a lengthy search via Google Groups is recommended...

 

[trikster2]

You could try washing it.

My northgate was giving my wife a lot of problems, she gave it a good soaking in the sink and everything worked well for another few years.

It's sitting in the garage now, a little loud for the family room, but great keyboard. Wish they still made them like that (for a reasonable price).

 

[Matt L]

Thanks skriefal, The ESC while booting did the trick! Don't know why, I've never done any thing with mapping, but I wonder if it was the side effect of the Exploit-MIME.gen.b virus that I found on my system last night.

Thanks again.....