usb keyboard dying at loader prompt

Volker volker at vwsoft.com
Tue Nov 11 12:09:22 PST 2008


On 11/11/08 19:55, Peter Wemm wrote:
> ...
> * There were other consequences of using the partition ID hack - I
> think I remember it turning off the apic for msdos mode.
> 
> Your problems may be different, but mine were caused by a BIOS
> whitelist of MBR partition id's.  What a stupid problem.  On that
> motherboard I ended up taking the path of least resistance and using
> the PS/2 adapter plug on the keyboard.

Peter,

very interesting what you've found. That reminds me on some
investigations I did as I was hunting USB boot device problems.

Some BIOSes do not check the partition (slice) ID but are looking for a
file system magic. If a FAT filesystem is detected, the BIOS does some
stupid things (like ignoring the active partition flag and booting the
FAT slice no matter what you've flagged active). Just an example and
off-topic to Andriy's keyboard problem.

But when combining that with your findings, it may still be a thing to
check for... ;)

Volker


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