[Tfug] NEC Motherboard

[JD Rogers]

>     Anyway I plugged it back in & fired it up, and now weird things are
> happening. The
> keyboard will work when it's connected to the ps2 mouse port. The mouse
> doesn't
> work at all. This is bad. The x-server won't come up if doesn't detect
> mouse input.

I've had very similar experiences a couple times. One of my favorite
was my college roommate who had a box that was so old that the hard
drive had grown co-dependent on the floppy drive which no longer
worked. At the time, I was pretty proficient with hardware and my
roommate was far more so than I. We had checked all the usual
suspects, like cable select, and other jumper settings. The hd would
ONLY boot if the broken floppy was connected (connecting a new working
floppy was not an option, it had become emotionally attached only to
the broken one).

We eventually proclaimed that the computer had outgrown its printed
circuits and lithographically defined IC's and had somehow grown more
sophisticated neural connections through the dust and debris of the MB
and broken floppy drive.

Since that time, I have had several additional experiences that
corroborate this theory and as a general rule, I recommend leaving any
dusty computer innards intact unless you like the idea of practicing
computer-lobotomies as a means to further investigate this strange
phenomenon.

Cheers,
JDR