t61p U key beeps

Just got my t61p and am adjusting to it. I'm not sure why everyone raves about this keyboard, the configuration is very weird to me, but anyway, my immediate problem:

Sometimes when I'm typing and hit the "u" key, it beeps at me (hardware type beep), and occasionally it will not output the u at all. I'll be typing 'should' and I'll get sho*beep*ld. If I type 'should should should should should should should should' it beeps like 1/3 - 1/2 the time. Just then it did the first 3x and one of the later ones.

I saw a fix someone did where they disabled the beep device. But I don't think this will fix the missing U.

Anyone have this/fix this? Thanks. I do have the service plan but I figured I'd see if I could fix it first.

 

Bump. Any help?

 

Just call IBM and they'll send you a new keyboard, will be at your door step the next morning. Its only held in by 5 screws so its an easy replacement.

 

I got a new one, replaced it, they replaced the mainboard twice and yet another keyboard, and it still does it. We found out you can make it happen by holding down O+H and pressing U. Can someone please try this and tell me if it beeps on yours? We're thinking it might be the actual controller chip on the keyboards or possibly a driver, but it does it in the BIOS and recovery stuff on startup as well.

 

Well, the tech guy talked to IBM and they replicated it on their end. I can't be the only one this bothers, I'm not the fastest typist in the world and I have it happen frequently. Can people please try O+H+U and tell me if it beeps? I need to find out if I have to try to get them to take it back defective or maybe I can exchange it for another model or something... "Working as designed." Ugh.

 

Pressing three buttons on your computer will beep yes. Unfortunately, that's how it's designed.

You can get rid of the beeps by following this: http://www.intelliot.com/blog/archives/2006/12/20/thinkpad-keyboard-beeps-fixed/

Good luck.

 

Who designs a computer so that fast typing isn't possible? Ridiculous.

Anyway, I just disabled the beep device (saw that before but hadn't tried it since it seemed not really a solution). It hasn't beeped yet, but now I have to watch out for missing U's. We'll see.

 

Nearly all computers have a keyboard limitation.

 

Yeah, I know that when you mash down a bunch of keys at once they will usually give up at some point... but I'm talking about typing fast where I'm not even hitting more than one at a time. It seems like the buffer backs up on certain combos or something and they all gang up on the U.

Anyway, knock on wood but I think the beep itself may have been causing the symptom of the letter not being echoed. Maybe when the hardware beep went off for whatever reason it caused a lag of some sort that made it skip that key. If I hold down OH now and hit U though, it still stops and doesn't print the U. We'll see if I keep getting "thoght" and "thogh" in my writing.

 

I have the same problem with my brand new T61. Actually 3 of us at my new job got these new ones and they all seem to do it.

I type very fast but only one key at a time. ANY word I am typing that has "oun" in it, such as "around" or "noun" or "country" or "flour" or ANY combination will always cause these PC's to beep. I have not noticed any missing characters though. (like your U sometimes didn't type, all my characters seem to be coming over).

I may turn off this BEEP device to see if that helps. I think you are correct about the PC building some kinda buffer and thats whats causing it to beep.

I wish there was a fix that didn't involve disabling the beep device but oh well, for now I may do that, the beeping does get old after a while.


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Just to report back since this got bumped, turning off the beep is NOT a fix for the problem - it just doesn't beep anymore. However, I still think the problem may occur less often after the beep was turned off; again, maybe because the whole thing seems to lag up a bit when it does the beep. I had the tech come over and replace the mainboard, keyboard, and who knows what else a couple of times and still get this problem. I forget if I said but IBM said this is "normal" for these.

This, along with the fact that about 1/4-1/3 of the time I try to wake it up from hibernation I get a "NMI Memory Parity Erorr, Check with your hardware vendor" BSOD and lose my hibernation data, are making me less than happy with this computer for the money I spent on it. I can't expect to maintain a work session from one place to another where even my crappy Dell almost never had/has a problem waking up from hibernation just fine - I only had to reboot it for real maybe every couple of months except for installs and updates, and that was when I was using it daily. I'd routinely see uptime in the many hundreds of hours with 20-30+ hibernation cycles. Now I have to open all my stuff back up, remember all of what I had open and was working on (sometimes Photoshop with a bunch of files, 3ds Max with a scene, a ton of websites, email, etc. all at once) and waste 10-15 minutes doing that before I can get back to work.

I'm going to try reinstalling XP and see if that helps the hibernation thing. I shold (ARGH) have done that when I first got it to avoid the bloatware, but I was excited to get using this. Oh, and I don't know if I already whined about this, but I didn't realize until I tried to burn a DVD that I didn't have a DVD burner! WTF?! Who makes a supposedly near-top-of-their-line computer without a DVD burner anymore? Not very impressed with the legendary Thinkpad... :/

P.s. anyone got a T61p DVD burner to spare?

 

Trying the same thing on my rather dilapidated HP ze4900 returns no beeping and no lost key presses. I would say this isn't normal across most laptops.

I can't speak for your other issue, but I would certainly be upset with Lenovo for such poor keyboard performance.

For the record, I can't recall my recently-deceased R51 having that problem either.

 

I hope this issue doesn't affect the entire Thinkpad line. I'd be very pissed to see that it would happen with my X61t when it arrives.

I recently sold N200 didn't make that noise as well. I usually type in the area of 75wpm (probably higher if I am not doing a typing test).
I make mistakes and random key presses left right and center...

As for the whole your computer should beep if three keys are pressed at once, I don't think that happened with the N200 while playing Stepmania for me (since you have to press 3-4 keys at once sometimes; this is possible if you spread it out over two different circuits and not say the four directional arrows)

 

There were a couple of different key combos that apparently overfill the buffer or whatever and cause the beep. It's not just any three or four keys, they have to be certain ones. But unfortunately those combos appear in many English words. Having recently learned a little about multiplexing for a MIDI project, I'm guessing the problem is actually on the keyboard's PC board and is a limitation with the way they did the multiplexing. No idea why they would change it from designs that have worked for years except that maybe eliminating one mux chip or going to a cheaper one reduced the cost a few cents per unit.

 

Just discovered this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_keyboard#Buying_considerations

Pretty much the problem in a nutshell.

Thanks to j-bomb for giving me the right information to throw at Wikipedia.