Why does Windows think that my wireless keyboard is a toaster?

http://superuser.com/questions/792607/why-does-windows-think-that-my-wireless-keyboard-is-a-toaster

by SergeyDruid • 12 years ago

227 46 12 years ago

superuser.com

tempodox• 12 years ago

Your keyboard was probably recycled from a USB toaster for Windows.

mariusz79• 12 years ago

Cylons are people too, you know.. No need for name calling.

matthewmacleod• 12 years ago

Fascinating. Did the driver developer not even plug it in to check?

4mnt• 12 years ago

Of course not. It is a wireless keyboard :)

jlockfre• 12 years ago

+10

GurnB• 12 years ago

You would think this type of device would be a FireWire 800 connection not USB.

esquivalience• 12 years ago

I guess it looks like a did-not-test error... but I'd like to think this was a deliberate decision to exploit already-embedded artwork.

tragic• 12 years ago

Welcome to the glorious new age of the internet of things!

eloisant• 12 years ago

- hey boss, I got the driver working from the sample but the icon is a toaster

- can you fix it?

- not sure, I tried a whole day and couldn't figure it out...

- whatever, ship it!

asdfaoeu• 12 years ago

The middle two lines never happen.

ender892• 12 years ago

Can confirm, no manager listens to anything you say after you admit that its working. The most I'll ever admit to is being "just about ready for QC".

yen223• 12 years ago

This would never happen if they implemented toast-driven development.

tbarbugli• 12 years ago

genius

neoyagami• 12 years ago

This is why I love HN

ender892• 12 years ago

More like "Hey boss, we need to pay someone to make a keyboard icon!" "Hahaha, no. Work it out." and why worry about an icon when you have a perfectly good toaster as a placeholder?

blowski• 12 years ago

I guess someone copied and pasted from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowshardware/Toaster-7d256...

userbinator• 12 years ago

It's more likely that whoever wrote the driver and used the default package didn't even notice the icon - after all, it's a keyboard driver - it should just work when it's plugged in.

oftenwrong• 12 years ago

Every USB toaster I've had has been too slow to be practical, so I always switched back to a conventional toaster eventually. Maybe when USB 3.0 toasters start coming down in price I'll give them another shot.

abrowne• 12 years ago

I've been happy with my Bluetooth toaster, as long as I don't microwave something at the same time. ;-)

CalRobert2• 12 years ago

Firewire could deliver 30V and 1.5A (45 Watts). An average toaster uses around 1000 Watts. With a very small and efficient design you just might be able to get a small piece of toast to work.

As I understand it USB for power may reach 100 Watts, which could power an E-Z Bake oven.

KMag• 12 years ago

An infrared laser diode toaster toasts a narrow band of the bread at a time, but toasts a full sized slice.

brokentone• 12 years ago

What's to say you couldn't use multiple plugs (granted that's linear growth when you need 10x)?

cezarywojcik• 12 years ago

I wonder how long it'll take before we have actual USB toasters and grills...

Erwin• 12 years ago

Apparently USB 3.1 -- called SuperSPEED+ (not to be confused with "Full Speed" (USB 1), "Hi-Speed" (USB 2) or "SuperSpeed" (without +, USB 3.0) supports up to 100 W.

A toaster takes 800-1500 W. But you could get a USB-compatible incandescent light bulb.

Perhaps in 2030, the European Union will require all wall sockets to be USB 7.0 compatible. As you plug in your vacuum it will not only receive 2000 W of power but will be able to share contents of the dust compartment with your friends via the Internet of Things. Lost an earring? Your friend's vacuum can now tweet you about it.

jordanthoms• 12 years ago

That's not actually all that crazy - I remember seeing a proposal for an electrical plug which had voltage and current negotiation - no power gets supplied until the handshake gets done. Makes the plug itself very safe (and you can have central transformers to provide 110v, 240v, 5v etc throughout your house).

NAFV_P• 12 years ago

All toasters are equal, but some toasters are more equal than others:

http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/Talkie_Toaster

laumars3• 12 years ago

Does anyone know why a toaster icon was picked above other place-holder icons? My educated guess would be paying homage to the old flying toasters screensaver.

kybernetyk• 12 years ago

My guess would be: "Ok, let's pick something totally insane as an example so people won't just copy & paste it and do proper testing instead".

dan1234• 12 years ago

Microsoft's sample code for driver development is for a hypothetical toaster bus[0]. I'm guessing someone built their real driver off the samples and either forgot to find an appropriate icon or left in a UUID which is associated with that icon in Windows.

[0]http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowshardware/Toaster-7d256...

laumars3• 12 years ago

Sorry, my question wasn't very clear. I get that the driver icon came from the Microsoft's example driver code. My question was why MS chose to use a toaster as their example.

Of course, there is always the possibility that these things are chosen just out of pure chance / randomness. But often there's more history to the decision than that.

SergeyDruid• 12 years ago

Could it be that the superuser.com OP changed the icon?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff5... mentions a toaster made by "Fabrikam, Inc.", a fictional Microsoft company. Could it also be a Microsoft easter egg?

DanBC• 12 years ago

I don't think MS do easter egss anymore.

Wait, here's a post about why the OS division doesn't do easter eggs: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/10/21/483...

JoeAltmaier• 12 years ago

Wow are they a bunch of wet blankets. There is no more risk of EE having security issues than any other code. EE code is generally small (miniscule). Lots of rhetoric in that link, but almost nothing meaningful but 'we want to be taken seriously'.

cellover• 12 years ago

At least the toaster-icon designer guy got some exposition now!

nothans• 12 years ago

Maybe so it can use Twitter. See MyToaster - https://twitter.com/mytoaster

NDizzle• 12 years ago

There's an Afterdark joke in here somewhere, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

JonnieCache2• 12 years ago

Microsoft is slowly catching up with BSD...

http://www.embeddedarm.com/software/arm-netbsd-toaster.php

tegeek• 12 years ago

Have you tested what we're shipping this evening?

No, but I'm already using "industry best practices".

skizm• 12 years ago

Does anyone know the model of the keyboard? Someone asked in the thread, but OP does not answer.

tim333• 12 years ago

Maybe it's this toaster http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/bbcinternet/2009/04/bbc_ip...

harry07• 12 years ago

Haha i seen your post on 9gag

Why does Windows think that my wireless keyboard is a toaster?

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