boot -a and USB keyboards

[Edgar Fuß <ef%math.uni-bonn.de@localhost>]

I recently ran into the problem that the kernel was asking me for the root 
device and I could not enter anything via the USB keyboard. I could scroll 
up and down (via left-shift-page-up/down), but could not respond to the 
kernel's question.

ws@ saved by day by suggesting to enter autoconfiguration and disable all
[oue]hci controllers. The problem seems to be that the kernel has already 
initialized the USB controllers, thus disabled the PS/2 emulation, yet isn't
ready to actually read from the USB keyboard.

The machine doesn't have legacy ports and at that stage had a root-elegible
autoconfigurable RAIDframe set it couldn't boot from, so without Wolfgang's 
advice, I would really have been seriously stuck. It would never have come to 
my mind that I would need to disable USB controllers in order to make a USB 
keyboard work.

Can there anything be done about this?