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1 | USB Legacy support | ||
2 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
3 | |||
4 | Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>, January 2004 | ||
5 | |||
6 | |||
7 | Also known as "USB Keyboard" or "USB Mouse support" in the BIOS Setup is a | ||
8 | feature that allows one to use the USB mouse and keyboard as if they were | ||
9 | their classic PS/2 counterparts. This means one can use an USB keyboard to | ||
10 | type in LILO for example. | ||
11 | |||
12 | It has several drawbacks, though: | ||
13 | |||
14 | 1) On some machines, the emulated PS/2 mouse takes over even when no USB | ||
15 | mouse is present and a real PS/2 mouse is present. In that case the extra | ||
16 | features (wheel, extra buttons, touchpad mode) of the real PS/2 mouse may | ||
17 | not be available. | ||
18 | |||
19 | 2) If CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G is enabled, the PS/2 mouse emulation can cause | ||
20 | system crashes, because the SMM BIOS is not expecting to be in PAE mode. | ||
21 | The Intel E7505 is a typical machine where this happens. | ||
22 | |||
23 | 3) If AMD64 64-bit mode is enabled, again system crashes often happen, | ||
24 | because the SMM BIOS isn't expecting the CPU to be in 64-bit mode. The | ||
25 | BIOS manufacturers only test with Windows, and Windows doesn't do 64-bit | ||
26 | yet. | ||
27 | |||
28 | Solutions: | ||
29 | |||
30 | Problem 1) can be solved by loading the USB drivers prior to loading the | ||
31 | PS/2 mouse driver. Since the PS/2 mouse driver is in 2.6 compiled into | ||
32 | the kernel unconditionally, this means the USB drivers need to be | ||
33 | compiled-in, too. | ||
34 | |||
35 | Problem 2) can currently only be solved by either disabling HIGHMEM64G | ||
36 | in the kernel config or USB Legacy support in the BIOS. A BIOS update | ||
37 | could help, but so far no such update exists. | ||
38 | |||
39 | Problem 3) is usually fixed by a BIOS update. Check the board | ||
40 | manufacturers web site. If an update is not available, disable USB | ||
41 | Legacy support in the BIOS. If this alone doesn't help, try also adding | ||
42 | idle=poll on the kernel command line. The BIOS may be entering the SMM | ||
43 | on the HLT instruction as well. | ||
44 | |||