Unresponsive keyboard after a few boots

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 8:52 PM, Rohit Grover <rgrover1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, this is a USB keyboard. If I plug in an external USB keyboard I
> get the same behaviour.
>
> In the mean time, I have discovered that if I boot the machine with
> MacOSX and then reboot into FreeBSD, it is very likely that FreeBSD
> will have no problems with using the keyboard.
>
> I am sure that this behaviour is new in 8.0/stable.
> Now that I have this method, I am willing to dig deeper into this
> problem and collect more information for debugging. Any ideas on how
> to proceed?
>
> regards,
>


My opinion is that MacOSX is initializing some circuit areas but FreeBSD 8.0
is NOT touching in those areas . Therefore , initialization values from
MacOSX are remaining in place and FreeBSD 8.0 is using those values without
changing them .

This idea is a pure guess , but
 when FreeBSD 8.0 starts initially and USB key board does not work , there
seems that this is most likely possibility .

If it is possible the following steps may be useful :

Initially start MacOSX , dump all of the related circuit register values .

Start FreeBSD 8.0 , repeat the dumping of the related circuit register
values .

This will give differences between two boots .

Initially start FreeBSD and dump all of the related circuit register values
. This may require a key board . Problem is to override this requirement .
If in the system there is also a PS/2 key board slot , a PS/2 keyboard may
be utilized . Another way may be a shell script or program starting on boot
automatically to dump the required values . In that case , a key board may
not be required .

This will show uninitialized values . Related sources may also be studied to
understand which areas are left without initializations .

Successive boots may clear properly stored circuit register values and they
do not initialize them properly .


Thank you very much .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk