From: "KirkusMcGurkus" <kirk@stenvall.net>

Date: January 25, 2009 4:09:07 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: KeyBoard illumination adjustment tip

Well, son of a gun! Would you look at that? I had no idea. Thanks for

the info, Milton. :)

--Kirk

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, "Milton Aupperle" <milton@...> wrote:

Hi Folks;

You learn something new everyday.

On my G4 laptop under OSX 10.4, my keyboard would not light up at

night. I had all the right buttons / check boxes in Energy Saver and

Keyboard panels set up correctly, but no light at night. I thought

maybe I broke it when I did my last round of upgrades, as it's a

little connector and I've read other people have broken it pretty

easily.

However I was doing updates to OSX 10.5. last night, and the keyboard

does light up with the same settings. 

So I did a bunch of digging online to discover you can adjust the

keyboard brightness using three Function keys F8 turns it on or off,

F9 makes it darker and F10 makes it brighter. For OSX 10.4 the light

level was set to zero (I have no idea how that happened), so that's

why it would never brighten up. Under 10.5.x it was around 80%, and

now I have both set to 100%. I used to tilt the screen or turn on a

flash light to see what keys I was typing on previously in 10.4.

However you can't make these adjustments with the Function keys unless

it's dark enough for the sensors to think it's night time / dark. When

you press the buttons in brighter light, the onscreen adjustments show

up with a white open circle with a slash through it, indicating you

can't make this change. I had to put the laptop under a blanket and

then it's dark enough to trick the sensors into allow you to use the

F8 to F10 buttons to adjust the keyboard brightness.

HTH..

Milton Aupperle