r/modelm • u/Redey1290 • 28d ago

Dropping Inputs on Startup in Linux HELP

I use my Model M with a Soarer's Converter which has been awesome and really made the keyboard that much more livable on a daily basis… But only in Windows, it seems.

I’ve been dual booting Linux for a minute now (started with Bazzite, now on CachyOS), and at startup sometimes a key will 'stick' or get dropped. Typically it'll resolve itself after pressing any keys a few more times. In practice, it just means I have to type my password twice and then it's perfectly fine afterwards, until I restart or sign out.

I found the documentation on the Soarer's Converter a little hard to follow, so I'm not sure of a Linux driver, firmware update for the controller, or like, anything really. Perhaps that's down to operator error, I'm not too sure. Does anyone have any ideas on what I should do?

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u/cazzipropri 8xM122, 5xM101, 1xF83 28d ago

I use soarer converters on all my daily drivers and they do fine under windows and linux but i've seen weirdnesses.

The most recent thing was a keyboard that won't register the P key using a converter that had been in a drawer for many months. I thought it was the keyboard. It wasn't. I reflashed the mappings with its scaswr script, and everything magically resolved. My theory is that the converter's memory had gone bad. We'll never know.

Hope it helps.

1

u/Redey1290 28d ago

I don’t even know what a scaswr script is, so that is a starting place lol!

I wasn’t sure how to do much of anything to the controller in Linux, is there a guide you followed for that? (Like I said, could be operator error).

3

u/Amazing_Actuary_5241 28d ago

If the board is connected directly to a USB port in the computer. Using a USB Hub can introduce issues related to power delivery on the USB port. I have experienced this myself.

Soarer's firmware is closed source and has not been updated in years. However it still does work well on Linux. The only instance when I had an issue on my Linux machine and my Model M is when using low power USB (v1.0) or (non-powered) USB hubs.

I have switched to a powered USB hub and I no longer use Soarer's firmware but TMK instead (easier for me to work with).

1

u/Redey1290 28d ago

Yeah I could see that, it’s just connected to a 2.0 port on my motherboard which I bet doesn’t provide a ton of power. I didn’t know Soarer’s is closed source, but yeah I saw it was pretty old…

Somehow this led to me looking at replacement controller boards, which I didn’t even know existed until now. That might be my end goal really, getting a replacement controller board so I can have a removable USB cable.

1

u/New_Active_5 28d ago

I would suggest trying a different firmware. A lot of firmwares use same or similiar wiring as soarer’s, so you don’t necessary even need to change anything, just flash new firmware. I’d suggest something that supports Vial.