How to disable 'click' of touch pad?

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 18:32:18 +0200
> From: Fabian Keil <freebsd-listen at fabiankeil.de>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile at freebsd.org
> 
> "M. Warner Losh" <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
> 
> > How does one disable the brain dead feature of 'tap here means clean'
> > of touchpads?  The one I have on my HP Pavilion dv5140us is so
> > sensitive that every dozen characters it 'clicks' and moves my cursor
> > elsewhere :-(.
> 
> As a ThinkPad owner I'd like to widen the question a bit.
> 
> Is it possible to disable all ways to click on a touch pad
> (disabling the touch pad buttons included), without disabling
> the mouse stick buttons as well?
> 
> I want to degrade the touch pad to a large virtual scrolling area
> without the click-by-accident feature, for everything else I have
> the mouse stick. 
> 
> I know that I can disable synaptics support,
> that's not what I'm looking for.

If you can dual boot Windows, this is easy. If not, it may be a bit
hard, depending on the model of ThinkPad.

If you still have Windows on the box, boot, log in, and
Start->Run... Enter 'cmd' and click OK to bring up a DOS-like shell.

In that shell, type 'PS2 ?' and find the item for TOUCHpad. I think the
command is "PS2 TOUCH DISABLE". This is written to CMOS and will disable
the touchpad for FreeBSD. IT will also make the TrackPoint a 3-button
mouse. 

On newer version of ThinkPad, you can also get into BIOS at boot and do
this, but older versions only allowed very minimal adjustments of the
configuration in that way and PS2 is the only way to do this on those
systems.

While you are there, you might want to look at other options. I always
disable suspend when the LCD is closed, enable the serial port and a
couple of other things.

If you don't still have Windows, you can go to the Lenovo web-site and
download the DOS PS2 program. If you have a floppy, you can place this
on a bootable floppy and go from there.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634