missing driver problem

[steve%prd.co.uk@localhost (Steve Blinkhorn)]

I have just installed the first of what is intended to be a clutch of
several amd64 systems on an Intel core i5 based Fujitsu micro PC - the
sort with everything soldered in and looks like a doorstop paperback.
The installation is multiboot with (pre-installed) Windows 8.1.

I have some (possibly related) problems.

1. If I boot normally, the keyboard does not function, but if I boot
single user and then Ctrl-D it does.

2. However I get hardware probe messages every few seconds saying that
a handful of devices related to a USB hub have disconnected.

3. Various devices just do not work, presumably for lack of suitable
drivers.   These are all Intel, and include both the Ethernet 1217V
and Wireless Centrino N-2230 network adapters, as well as the USB 3.0
hub and a handful of others.

I have seen the correspondence in the NetBSD-users archive a couple of
years back, which didn't seem to come to any very definite conclusion.
I'm a long-term NetBSD user, but driver development is just out of my
league.   Have I wasted my money on this kit?   I've never had the
experience of commodity hardware failing to find suitable drivers
before, and these machines  are scarcely  leading-edge experimental.
Of course, there may be drivers that just aren't configured in the
GENERIC kernel, but without a network connection to download the
sources I'm not in a good position to find out.

-- 
Steve Blinkhorn <steve%prd.co.uk@localhost>