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

[Phil Stracchino]

I have a hardware-failure-workaround problem on older PC hardware.
Specifically, an ASUS P5A motherboard bearing an AMD K6-III/450
processor.[1]  (I don't think I've asked this before, but please bear
with me and remind me if I have.)

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?



[1] Personally, given a free hand, at this point I'd just say "Heck with
it", retire the K6 board, and throw an AthlonXP or Athlon64 board in
there.  I could probably get board and CPU for not much over $100, and
could redistribute some RAM.  Consensus on this approach, however, has
not been achieved.


-- 
        Phil Stracchino                CDK#2
 Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
 phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net   alaric at caerllewys.net
 Landline: 603-429-0220           Mobile: 603-320-5438
        It's not the years, it's the mileage.