Q: keyboard: Too many NACKs -- noisy kbd cable?

From: Brendan Miller (brmiller@netgate.net)
Date: Sun Jan 09 2000 - 22:59:44 EST


I recently installed Linux on an SMP Pentium-133 machine which has
PS/2 style mouse and keyboard ports. Everytime since and including
the first time I booted a Linux kernel, the output has included the
two lines:

Jan 2 11:10:54 krypton kernel: keyboard: Too many NACKs -- noisy kbd cable?
Jan 2 11:10:54 krypton kernel: keyboard: Too many NACKs -- noisy kbd cable?

Sometimes when the boot finishes, the keyboard works, other times
it doesn't. Always, even when it works initially, eventually (after
a couple of days or so) it doesn't work at all. I can still telnet
in (thankfully) and do things, but a look at the logs will show

Jan 6 18:21:14 krypton kernel: keyboard: Too many NACKs -- noisy kbd cable?
Jan 6 18:21:12 krypton kernel: (last message repeated xx times)

So clearly there is something wrong. I have tried a couple of different
keyboards, but unfortunately, these don't even work at all--the BIOS
generates a "keyboard error" after counting the RAM. So somewhere,
there is a keyboard glitch. I'm hating the prospect that it's a part
of the keyboard controller/aparatus on the motherboard. Another interesting
datapoint is that all the keyboards I have tried are AT keyboards with
a PS/2-AT adapter--I doubt a problem since I have used this combo
many times, but a consistent artifact nonetheless.

So what are my choices of things that cause this? I did look at the
keyboard code where this message originates, and it simply looks like
a fancy way of saying "keyboard not responding". But why? Is there
really a chance of a noisy keyboard cable?

Please advise,

Brendan Miller

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