NAME

       kbdrate - reset the keyboard repeat rate and delay time

SYNOPSIS

       kbdrate [ -s ] [ -r rate ] [ -d delay ]

DESCRIPTION

       kbdrate  is  used  to  change  the  keyboard repeat rate and delay time.  The delay is the
       amount of time that a key must be depressed before it will start to repeat.

       Using kbdrate without any options will reset the repeat rate to 10.9 characters per second
       (cps) and the delay to 250 milliseconds (ms) for Intel- and M68K-based systems.  These are
       the IBM defaults. On SPARC-based systems it will reset the repeat rate to 5  cps  and  the
       delay to 200 ms.

OPTIONS

       -s     Silent.  No messages are printed.

       -r rate
              Change  the  keyboard  repeat  rate  to  rate  cps.    For Intel-based systems, the
              allowable range is from 2.0  to  30.0  cps.   Only  certain,  specific  values  are
              possible,  and  the  program  will  select  the  nearest  possible value to the one
              specified.  The possible values are given, in characters per  second,  as  follows:
              2.0,  2.1,  2.3,  2.5,  2.7, 3.0, 3.3, 3.7, 4.0, 4.3, 4.6, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 6.7, 7.5,
              8.0, 8.6, 9.2, 10.0, 10.9, 12.0, 13.3, 15.0, 16.0, 17.1, 18.5,  20.0,  21.8,  24.0,
              26.7,  30.0.  For SPARC-based systems, the allowable range is from 0 (no repeat) to
              50 cps.

       -d delay
              Change the delay to delay milliseconds.  For  Intel-based  systems,  the  allowable
              range  is  from 250 to 1000 ms, in 250 ms steps. For SPARC systems, possible values
              are between 10 ms and 1440 ms, in 10 ms steps.

       -V     Display a version number and exit.

BUGS

       Not all keyboards support all rates.

       Not all keyboards have the rates mapped in the same way.

       Setting the repeat rate on the Gateway AnyKey keyboard does not work.  If someone  with  a
       Gateway   figures   out   how   to  program  the  keyboard,  please  send  mail  to  util-
       linux@math.uio.no.

       All this is very architecture dependent.  Nowadays kbdrate first tries  the  KDKBDREP  and
       KIOCSRATE  ioctls.   (The  former usually works on an m68k machine, the latter for SPARC.)
       When these ioctls fail an ioport interface as on i386 is assumed.

FILES

       /etc/rc.local
       /dev/port