Lappy question

unclehobart

unclehobart

New Member
My aging dinosaur of a 500 cele Fujitsu Lifebook is having issues.

Firstly, the PCMCIA ethernet card took a dump... so I went and bought a more slick and modern one to replace it (Hawking). Inserted the card, let the hardware manager pick it up and install it, installed the driver package, did the reboot, started to reinstall the TCP/IP protocols when I discovered the keyboard commands were nonexistant or random. It would seem that the kids have been raining a steady supply of sweet drinks and cookie crumbs into the gearing to the point that it is DOA. I tried cleaning it as well as I could... but being a lappy, it is rather fused to the core of the mechanism and not readily avialable to a deep cleaning. I want to find a way to keep this machine limping along...so...

The question is:
Is there a way to mod another laptop into mix to supercede the existing one via external ports and whatnot? I don't want to replace the existing keyboard outright as it would be more costly than the mechanism is worth.

-or-

Is there a handicapping mod or program that would give an on-screen keyboard that is usable via the mouse in the same way as the Windows claculator program is?

-or-

A third solution of thy own to suggest.



*at this point I walked over to stare at the various available ports left open on the lappy and have found a 5 pin DIM slot and one of those flat blade looking (AMP?) ports being unused. It does look like I have plenty of room for an exteral keyboard of some kind. If it works, does anyone know if I have to manually disable the existing keyboard for it to work, or can they work in tandem?

This is all assuming of course that it wasn't the new card causing the ruckus in the first place. I wouldn't put it past my own particular brand of luck.
 
Gimme a pic of the back of that lappy. I suspect you can use a USB keyboard, but I need to be sure you have a free port.
 
unclehobart said:
My aging dinosaur of a 500 cele Fujitsu Lifebook is having issues.

Firstly, the PCMCIA ethernet card took a dump... so I went and bought a more slick and modern one to replace it (Hawking). Inserted the card, let the hardware manager pick it up and install it, installed the driver package, did the reboot, started to reinstall the TCP/IP protocols when I discovered the keyboard commands were nonexistant or random. It would seem that the kids have been raining a steady supply of sweet drinks and cookie crumbs into the gearing to the point that it is DOA. I tried cleaning it as well as I could... but being a lappy, it is rather fused to the core of the mechanism and not readily avialable to a deep cleaning. I want to find a way to keep this machine limping along...so...

The question is:
Is there a way to mod another laptop into mix to supercede the existing one via external ports and whatnot? I don't want to replace the existing keyboard outright as it would be more costly than the mechanism is worth.

-or-

Is there a handicapping mod or program that would give an on-screen keyboard that is usable via the mouse in the same way as the Windows claculator program is?

-or-

A third solution of thy own to suggest.



*at this point I walked over to stare at the various available ports left open on the lappy and have found a 5 pin DIM slot and one of those flat blade looking (AMP?) ports being unused. It does look like I have plenty of room for an exteral keyboard of some kind. If it works, does anyone know if I have to manually disable the existing keyboard for it to work, or can they work in tandem?

This is all assuming of course that it wasn't the new card causing the ruckus in the first place. I wouldn't put it past my own particular brand of luck.
Click to expand...

I believe those keyboards do come apart...just for such an emergency. If they don't, there's always e-bay...:shrug:
 
Back and side shot. The back shot is fairly clear. The fuzzed side shot has: volume wheel, headphone/speakery jacks, and an empty blade style port.
 
'K. I'm assuming the side flat connector is NOT USB? What's plugged in at the far left and far right on the back?
 
HomeLAN said:
'K. I'm assuming the side flat connector is NOT USB? What's plugged in at the far left and far right on the back?
Click to expand...
Mouse to the left, Power feed to the right.

I think it is a USB... thats a little trident looking symbol, no?
 
Yep. Should be able to plug a USB keyboard into that. I don't know what settings to tweak in the BIOS to get her to recognize, if any, though.
 
She probably won't activate on boot (unless you've a Legacy USB option in the BIOS), but windows will pick it up, and that's good enough.
 
Yeah, I just checked. The only keyboard/mouse settings within the BIOS are to set Numlock status on boot and to disable the internal pointer.
 
Bleh.. No extra USB keyboards about. Looks like another trip to the comp store for daddy to get a cheap as chips keyboard.
 
unclehobart said:
Bleh.. No extra USB keyboards about. Looks like another trip to the comp store for daddy to get a cheap as chips keyboard.
Click to expand...

That's a pisser. I've got three of the damn thing lying unused at home. Do you know how hard it is to get an 8 port USB KVM switch?
 
What the heck is the round one on the back good for? It looks like a PS2 plug except that the peg part is running left to right instead of up/down. Video feed of some kind?
 
Got the bypass hooked up... plugged in all the numbers... did the restart... and nothing... DNS errors trying to find the internet. What did I do wrong? Do I need to delete to old card out of the protocol to get it to recognize the priority of the new one?

Also, it keeps reinstalling the card as new hardware every time I fire it up regardless that it is already installed.
 
The keyboard works, though?

Delete the old card!

Then double-check all your TCP/IP settings. Manually set an IP address in the proper range, with the proper subnet mask. Be sure that your gateway is properly set and that your DNS servers match what's on a working machine.
 
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