Subject: Re: Abstracting pckbc(4)
To: None <tech-kern@NetBSD.org>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
List: tech-kern
Date: 02/01/2004 22:18:29
>> You didn't mention support for hot pluggable keyboards and mice.
>> For example, if you boot a machine without a keyboard, and plug a
>> keyboard in later, it would be nice if it worked.
> Does it work at the moment with pckbc?

After a fashion.  I have seen i386 machines running relatively recent
versions (a 1.6.1 I set up for $ORK, for example) boot without a
keyboard connected (obviously, the BIOS is set to not halt POST on
keyboard error).  The keyboard is detected during autoconf even though
there is no keyboard physically connected; plugging in a keyboard later
Just Works.  (Indeed, I once saw a site that depended on this; they had
a roomful of machines and about two screens and keyboards, which were
on wheels; if you wanted to work with a particular machine, you wheeled
one of the screen-and-keyboard sets to that machine, plugged them in,
and started typing.)

However, people talking about hot-plug often mean devices coming and
going in the device tree as you connect and disconnect the hardware,
and in that sense I haven't seen hot-plug pckbc working.

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