ok, i answered my question below but of course this leads to another
one. it seems that when xkb is disabled the problem disappears, or at
least is greatly diminished. the keyboard still gives me occasional
incorrect characters, and some of them in rapid succession. so, are
there problems with disabling xkb? other ways to modify the way the
keyboard sends information?

thanks in advance,

j


> i hooked up a wireless keyboard to my freebsd machine and it works
> fine, that is, until i start my x server. then each key pressed on
> the keyboard outputs a pair of characters, lliikkee tthhiiss. i'm
> running xfree86, and i've tried different window managers and all are
> affected. any suggestions?
>
> j