I just bought a refurbished 17BII from Samson Cables which is giving me the following Fail Message towards the end of the self-test in which you step through the tests:
KBD 02501
followed by:
FAIL 00020
Has anyone ever seen this? Any help in decoding? The calculator seems to be working ok in spite of this - but I don't want a bum calculator.
At http://www.hpmuseum.org/features/17bf.htm there is information about autotesting a 17B - maybe it helps.
Once the KBD message appears, did you press each key in sequence? You start from the top left, press the 6 top row keys in order, left to right and repeat for each row below. If you press a key out of sequence or you have a bad key, you will see the message you describe.
The message of KBD 02501 indicates it is the "+" key that is faulty. If your "+" key works, you probably pressed the "+" key when the self test was expecting something else.