Re: USB keyboard problems

[Dave Leimbach <leimySPAM2k@xxxxxxx>]

Matthew Dillon <dillon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> :I finally got a few minutes to play with several keyboards and CMOS options
> :to see what is going on with my keyboard on my ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe
> :motherboard.  I need USB Legacy Keyboard and Mouse support enabled for
> :things like GRUB and Plan 9 but when I boot into DragonFly with this
> :CMOS option enabled I can't use my keyboard.
> :
> :If I turn off legacy USB support on the keyboard it works fine in
> :DragonFly but not in GRUB [at all].  I can of course just twiddle the
> :bits when I boot dragonfly as a workaround for now but this seems like
> :a bug that needs fixing as I don't have this problem in Windows or
> :other OSes...
> :
> :I wish I had more information than a dmesg dump but here it is:
> 
>     Similar problems have been posted to the FreeBSD groups.  The
>     concensus seems to be that a lot of BIOSes have severely broken USB
>     legacy keyboard support and that you are better off either using 
>     a normal PS/2 keyboard, a USB-to-PS2 converter on your keyboard
>     cable, or going native USB all the way.
> 
> 						-Matt

Thanks Matt.  It's odd though that linux deals with whatever this problem is
seemingly well as well as Windows.

The problem this presents for me only occurs when I need to switch what OS 
I am booting into as I need to either plug in a PS/2 keyboard or switch
legacy support on to be able to navigate GRUB.

I will check if there are any BIOS updates for my hardware before diving much
deeper all the same.  I've seen hardware work with AGP in Windows and the 
Linux drivers couldn't deal with the problem on certain HP systems as well so
I know this can be tricky :).

I'll keep the list updated if fix is in the BIOS.

Dave