Re: HELP - ASUS Px9x79 P won't boot NetBSD-6.0

[David Laight <david%l8s.co.uk@localhost>]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2012 at 08:23:13PM -0800, Paul Newhouse wrote:
> 
> I have come into possession of an ASUS P9x79 P.  It has no PS/2 connections
> (which my older KVM switch uses) so I purchased a USB to PS/2 split cable.

Cable? that would have to be some kind of USB<->PS/2 conversion silicon.

> When I boot a DVD from the 6.0 boot.iso on the NetBSD site I see
> this behavior:
> 
> - when the "Boot in ... 5... 4.. ..." sequence appears I can hit enter
> and the count down ceases and the boot begins,

I presume the output is on the VGA screen?
That might imply that the bios is using the USB keyboard, and so the
bios calls used by the the boot code work.
Possibly the bios has set the USB chip to do PS/2 emulation for the
keyboard.

You should be able to get into the (old) command line interactive
part of the boot code - with a working keyboard.

> - it seems to discover a lot that I expect but, eventually says (
> something like) boot device: unknown.  It wants me to enter a device
> name BUT, it will not accept any keyboard input (I don't understand why \
> it can't find the device on its own but, that's the next problem (maybe).)

Is that from within the kernel ?

...
> I'm thinking/hoping I just need to build a boot kernel with some options
> set so it will use the USB keyboard and mouse via PS/2. If someone would
> be kind enough to provide me with a few clues I'd appreciate it.

The kernel ought to find the USB keyboard (and mouse) just because they
are there.
There are some 'funnies' to get the keyboard out of ps/2 emulation mode
and I thought they worked (reasonably well on most hardware).

Not finding the boot device will be unrelated to any keyboard issues.

        David

-- 
David Laight: david%l8s.co.uk@localhost