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

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Scott Newell <newell at cei.net>
>Date: 2007/06/19 Tue AM 08:36:44 CDT
>To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [rescue] Best brains:  Dead keyboard ports on PC hardware

>At 06:43 AM 6/19/2007 , Phil Stracchino wrote:
>>
>>Anyway, everything on the machine works fine, and it has a brand new
>>install of win2KProSP4, but .... on the final reboot before finalizing
>>the install, it fried its PS/2 keyboard ports.  As far as I know, its
>>BIOS has support for USB keyboard and mouse at boot ... but it's not
>>enabled.  So, it's still perfectly usable ... if I can turn on the USB
>>keyboard support in the BIOS, for which I need a working keyboard at
>>boot time, for which I need USB keyboard  support enabled so that I can
>>get into the BIOS setup to enable USB keyboard support so that I can
>>have a working USB keyboard at boot ... well, you get the idea.
>>
>>
>>Any cunning workarounds?
>
>Does you BIOS default to USB keyboard support enabled?  If so, could you
>pull the battery and blow away your NV BIOS settings?

Nope - defaults to "disabled" (I scanned the manual a few minutes ago...

>What happens if you let windows boot and then plug in a USB keyboard and
>mouse?

When USB is "disabled" at the MB level, the OS won't se the USB hardware 
attached (the port is, uhm, "disabled").

Besides, there is no conclusive statement that the MB supports USB keybaord/
mouse at the BIOS level if it were enabled...

Lionel