Mike Chambers
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2006
- Messages
- 2,621
i have a BMI XT clone, and all of a sudden, after no changes in hardware or software, the keyboard input in DOS stopped working. (this is both on a fresh floppy boot, or a hard drive boot.. any DOS version i try doesn't work with the keyboard, and i've tried it with 3 keyboards)
i considered the mobo dead for quite a while, thinking maybe i could replace the keyboard controller eventually and see what happens. well last night i brought the beast back out and just for kicks burned an EEPROM of that very-tweaked taiwanese XT clone BIOS from phatcode.net and put it on the motherboard. presto, the keyboard magically works again.
now, i can use the machine with this new BIOS firmware, so i'm not complaining -- but, i just have to know.. does anybody have ANY possible explanation for this? it is totally non-sensical, at least to me! some latent bug in the original BIOS maybe? okay maybe, but then why would it just happen all of a sudden after working with the BIOS fine since 1986?
EDIT: i also temporarily swapped the BIOS from my real XT onto the clone as well, and the keyboard worked with that also.
i considered the mobo dead for quite a while, thinking maybe i could replace the keyboard controller eventually and see what happens. well last night i brought the beast back out and just for kicks burned an EEPROM of that very-tweaked taiwanese XT clone BIOS from phatcode.net and put it on the motherboard. presto, the keyboard magically works again.
now, i can use the machine with this new BIOS firmware, so i'm not complaining -- but, i just have to know.. does anybody have ANY possible explanation for this? it is totally non-sensical, at least to me! some latent bug in the original BIOS maybe? okay maybe, but then why would it just happen all of a sudden after working with the BIOS fine since 1986?
EDIT: i also temporarily swapped the BIOS from my real XT onto the clone as well, and the keyboard worked with that also.