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This used to be a thing for a reason http://alphahole.net/?p=1011 http://alphahole.net/?p=1011 (But yes now it's basically useless)
by chipperyman573 10y ago
This used to be a thing for a reason http://alphahole.net/?p=1011 http://alphahole.net/?p=1011 (But yes now it's basically useless)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- CamperBob2 10y agoThe reason they cite isn't valid, for reasons explained in the comments. The reason the BIOS stops and says "Keyboard not found, press F1 to continue" is to give you a chance to plug in the missing keyboard, so that it can be initialized and supported by the BIOS before continuing to boot.
- AstralStorm 10y agoAny mainboard worth money has a way to skip this check in settings.
- CamperBob2 10y agoYep. This is feasible because modern OSes don't rely on BIOS to the same extent that DOS did.
- qb45 10y agoNot sure, this seems to encourage hotplugging which can damage AT and PS/2 keyboards or motherboards. I think the real reason was: if (err) { puts(strerror(err)); puts("Press F1 to continue"); }
- breakingcups 10y agoThe writer of that article is very wrongly informed.
- qb45 10y agoYou are being generous, the article is complete bullshit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A20_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A20_line And, of course, as pointed by sibling poster, the i8042 is on the motherboard, not in the keyboard.
- geocar 10y agoNo, it never did. The 8042 isn't inside the keyboard but on the motherboard, and the status register inp(100)&2 is clear even when there isn't a keyboard attached. The way the BIOS detects a keyboard is by sending a command from the 8042 to the keyboard (usually 255; reset and do basic test) and waiting a few seconds for the ACK. Users often used the keyboard in those days and might want to know that the keyboard itself wasn't plugged in or working before booting up the computer because the keyboard lines (while often robust) didn't actually support hotplug and plugging in a keyboard while the controller was trying to talk to it could actually damage the computer. Meanwhile some other people used PC hardware as something other than a PC, and in those cases might not want a keyboard attached that can get damaged, so most BIOS actually let you disable the keyboard startup test.