Re: My project wish-list for the next 12 months

On Thursday 02 December 2004 01:49 pm, Robert Huff wrote:
> Scott Long writes:
> >  Are you talking about putting a minimal USB stack into the boot
> >  loader?  That _certainly_ cannot fit into boot0, and I doubt that
> >  it can fit into boot1.  It might be possible for
> >  boot2/BTX/loader, but that's also quite a bit of work.
>
> 	As far as I know - and I would _love_ to be wrong - USB
> keyboards are not recognized before the kernel proper loads.  This
> means I have to keep a PS2 keybaord attached to interrupt the
> countdown and make the jump to sub-ligh\\\\\, er. single user.  I
> have no idea what stage of the boot process this is; all I know I
> have to use two keyboards where I should only need one.
>
> >  I take it that your BIOS does not provide keyboard emulation for
> >  you?  If not, I guess that it makes it difficult to boot to DOS.
>
> 	The motherboard is an Asus P4S533 with an Award BIOS.  I can't
> take the machine down to check on any keyboard emulation settings.
> (And the box has always been 100% Microsoft-free.)

This is an ASUS bug, possibly a bug in the reference bioses.  They have 
a whitelist of MBR partition types to decide what to do about USB 
keyboards.

What is supposed to happen is that the bios keyboard and video calls 
work with the usb keyboard.  Bioses also have a 'legacy' keyboard 
hardware emulation to simulate PS/2 keyboard hardware using the usb 
keyboard.  This feature is meaninless to us in boot1 / loader / etc 
because we are a normal bios client like msdos.

However, if the bios sees partition type 165 (FreeBSD), it freaks out 
and completely shuts down all USB support.  Even for the bios keyboard 
service calls.

If you boot MSDOS, for example.. the bios keyboard service calls are not 
disabled and keep working.

Asus seems to be the worst offender in this area recently.  This 
misfeature appeared on their newer Athlon64 boards and now you've 
reported it on their P4 boards..  Grrrrr.
-- 
Peter Wemm - peter_at_wemm.org; peter_at_FreeBSD.org; peter_at_yahoo-inc.com
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5