Re: problems with HP Pavilion 6635

On Mon, 2006-07-10 at 08:55 +0000, MasterBlaster wrote:
"Allan Adler" wrote

I have a used HP Pavilian 6635 and currently run RedHat 7.1 Linux on it.

Do you have any friends with computers, or do they all run Windows and are
therefore your mortal enemies?

Recently the mouse stopped working on it. I tried cleaning the mouse and
also replacing the mouse with another mouse lying around the house but
it still doesn't work.

Take your mouse to a friend's place (if they'll let you in the door, you horrible
Linux user!), and see if it works on their system.

Instead, the mouse seems to talk directly to the motherboard. I can't be
sure because there is some kind of metal covering what is going on and
I'm not prepared to remove it.

PS/2 mouse ports look like shiny tin boxes about 1/2" square, with the socket
on one side, and 6 pins soldered to the motherboard. Not generally serviceable.

I could try to buy a new mouse and try it out, but what if it turns out
that the problem is really with the connection between the mouse and
the motherboard? Is there any way to deal with that other than to get
a new computer?

Could be the mouse.
Could be the motherboard.
Could be that Linux no longer recognizes there's a mouse attached.

Maybe try a DOS bootdisk...
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
The 5.0 version will work, and includes Qbasic.exe
Click the downloaded Boot500.exe to create a bootable floppy.

Add an old Qbasic program to the floppy disk...
http://bbs.trod.org/files/program/mousdemo.bas

Add a generic mouse driver (unzipped) to the floppy disk...
http://www.orbitals.com/cp/mouse.zip

Let the system boot to the floppy, type MOUSE.COM to activate
the mouse driver, type QBASIC /RUN MOUSDEMO.BAS to run the
little demo program, and see if it works. If it does, then the mouse,
motherboard and connections are all fine.

I had similar problems with a trial Mandrake install (rpm based). In my
case I think it was due to my itchy fingers...

However, why not try one of the live distributions such as knoppix or
Ubuntu - these should see your mouse; if they don't then it's almost
certainly hardware related.
--
Jeremy Boden


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: problems with HP Pavilion 6635
    ... Do you have any friends with computers, or do they all run Windows and are ... and 6 pins soldered to the motherboard. ... Click the downloaded Boot500.exe to create a bootable floppy. ... Add a generic mouse driver to the floppy disk... ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc)
  • Re: floppy disk
    ... other computers, you might have a bad Floppy drive port on the motherboard. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: miising "A" drive
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  • Re: Multimedia Audio Controller
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    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • i need seagate sata drivers, i think?
    ... motherboard two files: oem.txt and sata.sys ... 2.Copy them on floppy ... when the blue screen shows press F6 (install additional ... install driver ...
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