setting up mouse and keyboard...

[Calum]

okay.
i have a laptop with linux mandrake 9.0 on it. i also have an external "microsoft" optical wheel mouse (USB) and an external compaq "bunch-of-extra-keys-along-the-top" keyboard (PS/2).

At present, the mandrake 9.0 knows about the USB mouse and the laptop keyboard. It does not know about the laptop's built in glidepoint mouse/pointer thing, nor have i introduced it to the external keyboard.

How do i set up the system so that linux will automatically use whichever device is or is not present please. I want to make it so that the external mouse and keyboard will be used if they are there, but that the onboard keyboard and mouse will work fine if the external ones are not there. Also, is there some way to turn on or off the onboard keyboard and pointer, so that i could sometimes have both keyboards 'on' and sometimes have only the external one 'on' (with the external one disabled)?

thanks very much indeed in advance. i know this is probably quite simple to answer but i don't know how, so maybe somebody who does can point me to a link or explain it. thanks again.......

[edit]oh yes. one more thing. the keyboards have different layouts. the onboard one is a US keyboard, and the external one is a UK keyboard, so how do we sort it out so the system knows which is which?

[ October 19, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[Calum]

the keyboard is ps/2 and as i said is uk, as opposed to the us one on the laptop. are there any stuff i need to set up in some config file for this? i want to know how to set all the stuff up manually that i described in the first post. Anybody know any good links?

[Calum]

oh come on!

i know it's not the most interesting topic in the world but can't somebody be bothered to come up with some hints? just a link or aomething would be helpful.

Don't take that the wrong way, i suppose many of you have never had need of setting this all up yourself.

well if nobody answers then i suppose i will have to make friends with google again...

[Crunchy(Cracked)Butter]

I had a similar issue with SuSE 7.3 on my laptop however i wanted to know how to use both mice at the same time, the trackpad and the USB MS Mouse.  All i did was edit the hardware setup menu over an over again until it got them both working at the same time as in windows.  Thats all  ican say sorry!  

[Calum]

okay, well thanks!  

i suppose i will have to go and trawl the internet, it'll be good for me! i need the excercise    ...