Raspberry Pi Official Keyboard

I don’t use the Raspberry Pi Official Keyboard/Mouse combo all that often, so I apologise in advance if this is a known bug of long standing.

With a 2GB Pi 4 running RISC OS 5.30, both the keyboard and the mouse (connected via the keyboard) worked normally at boot-up, but the pointer froze (and the keyboard was unresponsive) after waggling the USB connector at the Pi end. Unplugging and reinserting the USB cable did not restore normal operation, but plugging in a different type of keyboard did work. This also happened with RISC OS 5.28.

In case it was a hardware problem with the Pi 4, I tried again with an 8GB Pi 4. Same result.

Finally, I tried a Pi 3B+. This time the Pi Official Keyboard passed with flying colours. Waggling the USB connector, unplugging and replugging, everything worked as expected. As before I tested this with RISC OS 5.28 and 5.30.

Is this a known problem with RISC OS on the Pi 4? If not, what further diagnostics should I collect?

There have been problems when using USB switches with keyboards and mice (which electronically unplug the devices), this occasionally results in a hang or exception though.

I’m not aware of any particular issue with the Raspberry Pi official keyboard, but being able to reproduce it on two different Pi 4’s but not a Pi 3B+, may make it easier to track down the issue.

There have been problems when using USB switches with keyboards and mice

I’ve given up trying to share keyboard and mouse between the Mac and the Pi4. Nine times out of ten I could switch back and forth without problems, but that’s not good enough…

The fact that the machines have different ideas about ideal keyboards is also an issue; strangely the ideal mouse for the Pi suits the Mac better than its own trackpad does, so I’ve acquired another one. One day I might even get round to converting a couple of Marconi Trackerballs to USB… https://clive.semmens.org.uk/DIY/Project5188.html