Okay, I know that this issue has been covered it about a thousand different forums, but my problem seems to be a little different than those that I've read about so far. First, to cover the basics, I have a Compaq Presario R3140US laptop, running Gentoo 2004.1, in 64-bit mode (i.e.: x86_64) b/c it has an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ proc. I have read before that for an Alps or Synaptics touchpad, you need to set the device location to "/dev/input/event1". Well, on my system, for some reason, /dev/input/event1 doesn't exist! The only devices in /dev/input are "mice" and "event0". Now, when you do
cat /dev/input/mice
you simply get nothing, wether an usb mouse is plugged in or not. Also, when you do
cat /dev/input/event0
you get the output from the keyboard, in ultra-cryptic fashon. I have also tried /dev/psaux and /dev/mouse as alternates, both to no avail. Also, as mentioned above, a USB mouse connected also doesn't show up as /dev/input/mice for some reason as well. I know that there needs to be a driver installed for the touchpad, but I think I should still be able to see it in /dev/ and be able to cat it for some output, so I'm kind of at a loss with this.
Thanx for any help!

i have exactly the same problem on fc2 on a 3400 athlon 64... did you find a solution?

OK, do you have psmouse and mousedev loaded? What about hiddev for USB mice?

Well, I went back through the kernel configuration, and it turns out that I did not have support for PS/2 mice, nor did I have support for USB HID devices built in yet (do'h!), so I recompiled the kernel with those options build in. Now the USB mouse works when plugged in, so I get some functionality, but /dev/input/event1 still doesn't exist for the touchpad. I figure that I need to enable some other type of kernel option or load some other driver, in order to get it to recognize the touchpad... Any ideas?

You also need evdev module ("Event Interface" it's also in the "Input Devices" section).

Ok, nevermind, I see that you have /dev/input/event0 for keyboard...

Can I see the lsmod, .config, dmesg and "cat /proc/bus/input/devices" please? You can send it directly to dtor_core@ameritech.net

Is there a solution? I have the same problem.

Specs:
Sager 4080 laptop, Alps Glidepoint
kernel (2.6.7) has usb hid, ps2, and events interface compiled in
OS: Gentoo with X.org
neither 'cat /proc/bus/input/devices' or 'lspci -v' show any reference to the touchpad
/dev/input/event0 is keyboard, /dev/input/{mouse0|event1} is PS2 Logitech wheel mouse

Oddly, the PS2 mouse is not detected at boot, because the laptop uses the same port for PS2 mouse _or_ keyboard. I have to unplug the mouse and plug it back in before it will work.