Dead USB keyboard problem and solution

[Bryan Liesner]

I recently replaced my PS/2 keyboard with a USB keyboard.  Works 
great, but with one exception.  If the system is rebooted, it's easy 
enough to get into the BIOS settings, but after the boot process 
starts, the keyboard is dead until the kernel is loaded.  So hitting 
the space bar to get to a loader prompt to boot kernel.old or perhaps 
putting in a boot -v was impossible.

I poked around on the mailing lists and saw that some others were 
having the same issue, with no real answers.

On a lark, I decided to try GRUB.  Replacing the BSD boot blocks with 
GRUB resolved this issue for me.  Now, when the system starts, I don't 
lose the keyboard and can hit the space bar when the loader starts to 
get to a prompt.

This brings up an interesting question, probably for another list. 
What are the FreeBSD boot blocks doing (or not doing) that cause the 
loss of legacy USB support?

-Bryan