FreeBSD 7.0 Suddenly Dead mouse

[Gary Palmer]

On Sat, Jun 07, 2008 at 04:09:15PM +0000, dfeustel at mindspring.com wrote:
> My optical mouse has suddenly died for the 2nd time in both kde and X on
> a new computer running 64-bit AMD FreeBSD 7.0. This is the second time
> this mouse has died this way (last time was when I was using the mouse
> on a different AMD 64-bit computer running X/kde onOpenBSD). Cycling
> power and rebooting the computer does not revive the mouse.
> 
> Assuming (dangerous, I know :-) ) that the mouse is not broken, where in
> the X code might the mouse be 'turned off' and how, (if that has been
> done) would I turn it back on?
> 
> Also, is there a way to simulate the mouse commands using the keyboard
> when the mouse becomes catatonic? I hate to have to keep using
> ctl-alt-bksp to abort X.

I cannot answer the "turned off" question, but if you have a keyboard
with a numlock key and a numeric keypad, pressing SHIFT-NUMLOCK
will turn the keypad into a low quality mouse.  8 moves the pointer up,
2 moves it down, etc.  Pressing SHIFT-NUMLOCK again disables the feature.

At least on my system, the system speaker beeps when you toggle
the feature.

Regards,

Gary