[ltp] Special Keys on Old Machines

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Sat, 12 Jan 2008, Matt Graham wrote:
> From: chris@idlelion.net
> > I recently put Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on my 750P. I'd like to get at least 
> > some of the special keys to work, but I know there's no ACPI.
> > I would appreciate information on how to intercept the function keys and 
> > connect them to commands to run, even in command-line mode.
> 
> Thinkpads have their special keys hooked up in a strange way:  The
> keys, when pressed, modified bits in NVRAM.  There's a utility called
> tpb that you can use to monitor the NVRAM and do arbitrary actions
> when various keys were pressed.  This works; I'm still using it on my
> T42p.  There are some options/warnings/caveats about particular models
> in the tpb documentation.  HTH,

This is quite true, and 100% the way to go for the 750P.

But for the T42p, one can do better and avoid NVRAM polling :-p It has all
hot keys properly exported as events through the ACPI layer, as long as you
are using one of the latest BIOSes for the T42p.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh