Wack0
[Wii] USB Keyboard works... until it doesn't
Hi, first of all I love this effort, and thank you for making it possible.
So I installed stock NT 4 as per tutorial (no SP2 update yet), Workstation English version, all works nice as documented. I know sound is still underway, and that overscan issues, which I and some others have, are something for us to fix in our own setups, but I ran into an issue that I haven't seen being reported nor documented yet.
I ran into this issue two times:
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Once during NT4 installation, during my first attempt, eventually the keyboard stopped working when I was mashing lots of keys during the EULA bit (overscan hid what keys I was supposed to press). This led me to try out lots of keys and... Keyboard just completely stopped working at one point. Odd. Had to reboot everything.
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Once during normal usage of Windows NT, I was playing Space 3D Pinball for quite a while, until... the keys all seemed to get stuck mid my keypress, and one of them remained that way as if I was still holding it. No keys were working any longer after that point. It should be noted that the mouse, connected to the other USB slot of the Wii, remained working perfectly, so I was still able to use Windows NT normally otherwise.
Of course, as there's no Plug'n'Play, I couldn't simply replug the keyboard into the Wii to see if it would fix the issue, so... I had to reboot to make the problem disappear.
It seems that after a certain unspecified number of keypresses in a given session, all keypresses cease to stop working, until there's a complete system restart.
Could this be looked into? With this, it seems NT PPC cannot be used for very long in a session...
＠Wack0 Haven't tried using any kind of USB hub so far, but I was planning on getting one to have more devices connected at the same time anyway, so I will gladly test that the moment I acquire one.
Haven't gotten a hub yet, but did some further testing.
I noticed this issue happens even if we don't really use the keyboard, and just leave the system on. After a certain time, the keyboard just won't be working.
This led me to think it is a time-based issue, like a time bomb, but it seems that's not quite true, because I then had the issue again after using the system for a very short time. So sometimes it happens more quickly than others. Quite strange.
I installed SP2 just today, and noticed the issue persists. Expected, but now we know for sure.
If the issue is that the keyboard is "momentarily losing power", akin to unplugging and replugging, it'd make sense that an externally-powered USB hub takes care of the issue. If I'm able to test this with a hub, I will report back.
Haven't gotten a hub yet, but did some further testing.
I noticed this issue happens even if we don't really use the keyboard, and just leave the system on. After a certain time, the keyboard just won't be working.
This led me to think it is a time-based issue, like a time bomb, but it seems that's not quite true, because I then had the issue again after using the system for a very short time. So sometimes it happens more quickly than others. Quite strange.
I installed SP2 just today, and noticed the issue persists. Expected, but now we know for sure.
If the issue is that the keyboard is "momentarily losing power", akin to unplugging and replugging, it'd make sense that an externally-powered USB hub takes care of the issue. If I'm able to test this with a hub, I will report back.
I don't have this issue on my European Wii with a Lenovo USB kb.
Bought a cheap USB hub that had a female "DC" connector for external, additional power, and the problem seems to have completely vanished. Thank you!
With this, I believe we can close this issue, although anyone else is still free to comment and mention further keyboards that do not have this extra requirement. But perhaps this "potential requirement" could be mentioned in the readme/documentation? Something like "if there are mouse/keyboard issues, try connecting them to a powered USB hub connected to the Wii/Wii U".
Thanks again to everyone for contributing.
Nevermind... The issue is still there even with a powered USB hub. :(
It's a "banda" cheap USB keyboard, incidentally.
I guess the solution for now is simply to try and find a keyboard without this issue... (It works normally on actual PCs and Macs, incidentally.)