Unusable Beige G3
Hello Everyone!
After a very good year using Debian sid on my desktop Beige G3 (233Mhz,
96Mb RAM, 4GB IDE Western Digital, ADB Keyboard & 1 button mouse, and
onboard Ethernet BMAC) I had the stupid idea of turning it into our DSL
router. That involved opening it up and inserting a 3COM 905 NIC into one of
the three free PCI slots. So far so good; the NIC worked perfectly but when
I closed the computer lid and begun to set up iptables etc I noticed that my
keyboard was behaving strangely. Things like hitting the "T" key once gave
nonsense like "weqwiojz\", and the 3rd column of keys (3,e,d,c) didn´t work
at all. So I thought: "This is somehow a strange conflict with the 3COM
card. Let´s get it out". Out it went, but still the problem persisted. I
have since then been trying for months to make it work again - the machine
boots ok, goes into Linux etc but I can´t log in (strange, the should be a
"rootqiurhiq\" user....) or do anything useful without the keyboard.
This problem with the keyb happens also in MacOS, even in the Open
Firmware prompt - so I am sure it is a hardware problem. Now I ask myself if
the machine is forever doomed or is there a way I can workaround that. The
g3 doesn´t have any other ports, just ADB, those two round "Telephone" and
"Printer" jacks... any ideas? Could I somehow use a "remote keyboard"? (I
can log in from the network ok, SSH etc remotely)
Thanks again and sorry if this is offtopic!!!
Ricardo Pardini
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