Re: AT keyboard optional on i386?

[Ricky Beam]

On Tue, 29 May 2001, Pavel Roskin wrote:
>> You can a few nice tricks with it like plug in two PS/2 keyboards. I
>> have this for my home setup. The only thing is make sure you don't
>> have both keyboards plugged in when you turn your PC on. I found BIOS
>> get confused by two PS/2 keyboards. As you can it is very easy to
>> multiplex many keyboards with the above design. I have had 4 different
>> keyboards hooked up to my system and functioning at the same time. We
>> even got a Sun keyboard to work on a intel box :-)
>
>That's what we like Linux for. It doesn't get confused when everything
>else does :-)

Heh, that's funny.  I must admit I'd never thought of that.

Anyway, the bios gets confused because it's trying to figure out (in a very
simple way) where the keyboard and mouse are.  It's true there's lots of
voodoo in PC BIOSes; keyboard/mouse detection isn't one of them.

(As I recall, I have to have something in the port to get it enabled.  Linux
 doesn't seem to know how to enable it.)

--Ricky