[rescue] Best brains: Â Dead keyboard ports on PC hardware

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Phil Stracchino <phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net>
>Date: 2007/06/19 Tue AM 08:00:32 CDT
>To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [rescue] Best brains:  Dead keyboard ports on PC hardware

>Mike Hebel wrote:
>> In a fit of angst Phil Stracchino gargled the following:
>>> Marcin 'Rambo' Roguski wrote:
>>>> Excluding the hardware failure? Can you disable serial
>>>> ports and see what happens?
>>> Not without getting into the BIOS.  See chicken and egg.  :)
>> 
>> Something else just occurred to me - try plugging in just the keyboard but
>> into the _mouse_ port.  Sometimes those are separate ports but have some
>> fallback.
>
>Already tried that, unfortunately.  I also tried three different
>keyboards, two of them known good keyboards from other machines, to rule
>out a keyboard failure.

I don't think there is a way to save this MB for use with a keyboard. You 
could load a different OS by installing a pre-configured OS hard drive and 
accessing the system via network/serial terminal, but without the local 
keyboard, it is toast (IMHO).

I took a look at the manual for the MB, and there is no conclusive statement 
that the MB would support USB mouse/keyboard that I could find, no serial 
console redirect, and no way to modify the BIOS settings to even try a USB 
keyboard. You could bot off a DOS diskette with a startup .bat file that 
would redirect input to come from the serial port, but even with a DOS system 
there is no tool t update the BIOS.

I think it's time to swap out the MB and upgrade they system (hey, want a 
SuperMicro MB with dual PIII/450 CPUs?). I don't see any guarantee that any 
efforts will result in a functioning system with a local keyboard...

Lionel