usb keyboard aargh!

[Tony Nelson]

At 8:33 AM -0400 8/20/06, Tom Horsley wrote:
>On Sun, 2006-08-20 at 10:23 +0200, Trond Danielsen wrote:
>> On 8/20/06, Tom Horsley <tomhorsley at adelphia.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > So I find an option in my BIOS that says enable USB keyboard
>> > support, turn it on, and grub works perfectly, but now linux
>> > doesn't see the keyboard.
>> >
>> What does lsusb say if you boot the computer with "USB keyboard
>> enabled" in the BIOS? Is it any different than if you boot it with
>> "usb keyboard disabled"?
>
>Looks like it isn't a consistent problem. If I go through
>a USB hub, sometimes it sees the keyboard sometimes
>it doesn't (same for mouse apparently). If I plug them
>directly into one of the usb ports on the motherboard,
>it always works fine (sigh... why does all this plug &
>play "it just works" stuff never work? :-).
>
>The motherboard BIOS never seems to have a problem seeing the
>keyboard via the hub so something about the linux usb
>bootstrapping must have some kind of timing problem.
>Grrr....

Is it a Hi-speed (2.0) or a full-speed (1.1) hub?  Hi-speed hubs are fancy
beasts that do protocol translation to 1.1 as needed.

Note that keyboards and mice are Low-speed (USB 1.1) devices, which USB 2.0
Hi-speed hubs emulate as 2.0 devices.  Your computer has a hub (or two)
built-in, but an external USB 2.0 hub must do the same emulation, and pass
it over the wire.  It should help to avoid mixing Hi-speed and full- or
Low-speed devices on a single hub, which can also improve the throughput of
the Hi-speed devices.
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