dollar sign on keyboard not working

Barbara, do you use a standard Apple US keyboard with your iMac? Do you use the “U.S.” keyboard input source? Does Shift-4 still beep if you boot into either single-user mode or Safe Boot mode? Do you have another username on your iMac that you can login as, to see if Shift-4 beeps for that username also?

Barbara, did the iKey keyboard have any software installed for it to work, or was it just plugged into a USB port? If it was just a case of plugging it in and typing, then the first place that I’d look would be in System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts, to see if Shift-4 somehow became a shortcut for some application.

Whoops, just noticed that you had already investigated the Keyboard Shortcuts.

The next place that I’d look would be in System Preferences → Language & Text → Text, to see if any kind of text substitution is being performed on the dollar sign.

If nothing out of the ordinary is happening there, then the next stop would be looking in /Library/Preferences, to see if there’s a .plist file that corresponds to the iKey. I don’t know whether it would show up as an Apple preference (e.g. com.apple.keyboardtype.plist) or as a Macally preference (com.macally. … .plist, perhaps?).

Check ->System preferences ->Keyboard and see if that combination has been customized to do something other than what you are expecting.

Any chance another program is somehow using that key combination for something?

all I get with the shift-4 is a beep.

This normally means that $ has been set as the trigger for speech recognition or text to speech in system preferences/speech. Go there and change that.

Nice going, Tom 🙂