Booting PLPBT CD To Start USB External Drive Mouse/Keyboard Stop

[Kenny-M]

When using PLPBT booting from a CD on a P.C. (Dell Optiplex 745smm) to boot an external USB hard drive running Linux PLPBT displays its menu as expected.

I make the selection of USB. After the boot transfer is made to the USB drive my USB Mouse and Keyboard stop working until Linux comes up in X. If Linux starts at a command prompt instead the Keyboard does not work.

Is there something in PLPBT's code where perhaps it resets the USB controller chips and thus disables/resets the USB Keyboard and USB Mouse?

Thanks.

[Elmar]

hi,
yes, the boot manager resets the usb controller. only one can control the usb controller. my usb driver cannot handle usb keyboards or mouse. so this hardware does not work until linux or windows takes the control of the usb controller.

... If Linux starts at a command prompt instead the Keyboard does not work.

you have to take care that linux has loaded all required usb drivers. the host controller driver and the hid (human interface driver) must be loaded. i dont know what linux you are using, but i think the most distros are loading those driver during the boot process.


regards
elmar

[Kenny-M]

I have tried several variants.  The problem occurs when the pre-boot display that asks if you want to add any startup options and you are presented with a line where you can type text on.

If the pre-boot times-out and starts Linux that seems to be OK.

That's one reason I am still keeping a couple of old machines (Dell  Precision 610 Zeon w/SCSI drives) around that have PS/2 connectors. No problem. But it seems all the newer stuff has USB keyboards and mice. I guess that would explain if I boot off a floppy into DOS and try to load a USB CD-ROM driver the same thing happens. I would suspect many people would have this problem.

I will try booting PlopLinux on that newer machine and see what happens. I will post my findings here.


Thanks.

[Elmar]

i am sure plop linux will work fine

[Kenny-M]

Yes, it booted up OK on the newer machine but there were a couple of issues.

The machine is a Dell 745smm (Small Form Factor)

1. The sound card is not recognised. It is a SoundMAX integrated controller.

2. The video does not come up correctly. When gnome is exited the regular command (sh) window is left with overlapping lines and is not legable. The video controller is an ATI Radeon X1300 Pro and the monitor is an Envision 19" LCD.

What seems to be going on is the H Freq is set to 31.47 , V Freq 70.08 and PClk to 27.90 and the resolution 720x400.

When manually forced in xorg.conf with H Freq 31.5 - 48.5 and V Freq 40 - 70 and a preferred resolution of 1024x768 it works as expected. With these settings the monitor has a H Freq of 48.54 , V Freq of 60.22 , PClk of 65.85 and a resolution of 1024x768.