SOLVED: Chicony KB-5591 trackball keyboard cursor lock?

[Timpanogos Slim]

i'm old, so i bought one of these when it was newish. i discovered today that i still own it.

Still works mostly. i have had to squirt deoxit d5 into some of the switches and tap them a bunch to get them to behave.

A word on the trackball -- i have noted in tonight's google searches that a lot of people complain of nonfunctioning trackballs.

When i went in to clean the rollers on mine i discovered that they had popped out of their pivots. No clue how or why they did, but all i had to do was snap them back into place.

I recall from my DOS days that there was a way to get the trackball to send cursor key codes. This was awesome for some games. It was a trigger - i forget exactly what. Hold down all three buttons, or some kind of tapping sequence. i can't get it do it. it's possible that it was dependent on a driver that came with it originally.

Anybody have a clue?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Elecplus has them for sale — https://www.elecshopper.com/chickony-kb-5591-iso-keyboard-with-trackball-nib.html/ — I've mentioned this topic to Cindy. Also, seebart has or at least had one (pictures on the wiki — https://deskthority.net/wiki/Chicony_KB-5591 — , but sadly no details on operation) so he might also be a good person to ask.

[elecplus]

Most of the new keyboards come with the driver disk. I have not tested them on DOS, but they work fine on XP and Win 7, without drivers.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The leaflet with seebart's says nothing, so unless the quick installation guide says anything, then I guess the drivers may provide the functionality. [Edit: Seemingly nothing in the quick installation guide either.]

[Timpanogos Slim]

The plot thickens:

I had this keyboard connected to an old 486slc machine running freedos. without a mouse driver loaded.

My siamese cat jumped on the desk and walked all over the keyboard and now the Cursor Lock light is lit, and the track ball is emulating arrow keys.

So it's in hardware.

I asked my cat what he did and he looked at me and said "Rwow!"

I will try bribing him with kitty snacks.

[Timpanogos Slim]

I'm not kidding, btw. There was a lot of beeping and when i got him off the keyboard the cursor lock was lit.

I think he was mostly in the upper right hand quadrant. I left that computer on and will investigate further in the morning.

[Timpanogos Slim]

It's ctrl-alt-RMB

hold down any ctrl, any alt, and click the right mouse button.

fwiw mine is rebadged by Identity Systems Technology as model number E8HKB-5591