On Thu, 4 Mar 2004, walt wrote: > > Another possibility is that the USB legacy mouse/keyboard support in your > > BIOS is messed up somehow. > > That might explain how conditions at boot time > > could affect the system. > > I found a setting in the BIOS called Legacy USB which was set on 'auto' > which I changed to 'disabled' and this fixed my problem :o) > > My next question is: did I give up anything important by disabling > 'Legacy USB'? I don't know what the setting does. The Zip drive > still works -- would there be other devices which might no longer > work?
Legacy USB support in the BIOS means support for USB keyboards and mice. The BIOS will convert between USB commands/data and PS/2 commands/data, so that you can use a USB keyboard or mouse even on a "legacy" computer that doesn't have a USB-aware operating system (such as DOS). If you don't have a USB keyboard or mouse, or if you use a USB-aware operating system, legacy support doesn't matter. > I did discover that the crucial period of time was for the Zip > drive to be plugged in during the reboot *before* linux starts. > I.e. if I plug in the Zip drive while the grub menu is displayed > then all works normally. It must be the BIOS initializing things > differently depending on what is plugged into the USB port (?) It must be. Probably the BIOS disables legacy support all by itself if it finds there are no USB devices attached at boot time. > Still, it's puzzling why compiling the uhci driver as a module > would make a difference no matter what the initial state of > the hardware might be. Anyway, it's the ps2 (serio?) driver > which got confused, not the USB driver, so maybe that's where > the bug is, if there is a kernel bug. > > Is this whole business something that needs more follow-up, > or should I write it off as a buggy BIOS? It's probably just a buggy BIOS. You can understand the ps2 driver getting confused since the BIOS was telling it that all sorts of crazy things were happening, thanks to the USB communication going on with your ZIP drive. If everything works okay now, you should consider the case closed. Alan Stern ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click _______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, use the last form field at: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-usb-devel
