hmmmmmmmmmmm......but if the switches are in series, won't they all do the same thing??

The switches aren't in series, they'd be hooked up to the microcontroller chip in the same way the keys on the keyboard would be,
but they'd be able to hook into eachother.

and if it's an analog signal, would there be an impedance change issue running them in parallell?

One side of the chip is digital (the part that goes into the computer), the other is analog. We don't really have to worry about impedance since these are switches and not, say resistors, or LED's, etc,... we aren't doing anything, we're just switching a logical state.

here a parallel example with just one 'key' :

[Select]

  input
  |  |
  |  |                             
  |  *_______________
  *__|_______________SWITCH
  |  |
  |  |
  |  |
KEYBOARD

Either the two wires short when you push the switch -or- the two wires short when you push a key on the keyboard,
for the input, there is no difference.  Maybe i'll look up the details on how they hook up to the microcontroller and make a little schematic and put it up on the bpm notepad website once i have it finished. Though chances are that many keyboards use different types of microcontroller, so it may be different and you may have to 'follow' the lines on the keyboard pcb (or membrane) anyway.

-Gothi[c] (March 21, 2007, 11:13 PM)

For any of you reading this that are less electronically gifted, there is always the simple way to do it...use a keyboard splitter.  You can get them for less than $5US at most cable supply companies.  Just don't use both keyboards at the same time (or in this case the keyboard and the pedal) or you get the same effect as pushing multiple keys at the same time.

I don't understand what environment variables has to do with it.  Please explain.  PATH is only needed to resolve programs which are not fully qualified, as I understand it.

-Kruskal (June 04, 2007, 01:22 PM)

That is true, but I thought it was looking for a version of the rundll32.dll in that folder.  If it is not in the path and is not fully qualified, it would not find it there and hence not work.

Of course with the fix, we just proved that was not the case.  :D

I definitely agree with these comments, especially Carol's suggestion of returning (or at least offering to return) the parts replaced.  As for the promised software to inventory the hardware, we use PCI32 at work.  You can download it and the instructions from http://members.datafast.net.au/dft0802/downlads.htm

Belarc Advisor is another one I have used, though not extensively.  It is nice because it uses a GUI interface:  useful for non-technical users.  You can get it at http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

I have also found a few others, though none of these have been tried.  They can be found at:
(Please note:  Many of these are commercial and/or free for personal use only)

FreeSysInfo                          http://shareme.com/download/freesysinfo.html             
HWareInfo 1.01                     http://www.surfpack.com/downloads/HWareInfo/27267.html
AIDA32                                http://www.majorgeeks.com/download181.html
ASTRA/ASTRA32                    http://www.astra32.com/
EVEREST                              http://www.lavalys.com/
Hardware Inspector v2.2.2      http://www.hwinspector.com/

The keyword search in google to get good hits for this type of software is "Personal PC Audit" and/or "system information software" if you want more options.