Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!pasteur!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!izumi
From: izumi@violet.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Booting AT (or clone) WITHOUT Keyboard ?
Message-ID: <18468@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 20 Dec 88 02:18:11 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: izumi@violet.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 39

I would like to ask you all PC Hardware expert in the netland if:

there is a way to boot (DOS) on an AT class machine WITHOUT a
keyboard attached.  Normally you cannot do this because the
BIOS Power-on diagnostics detect keyboard errors.

I am wondering if a small "dummy keyboard connector" with a
simple circuit on it can fool the BIOS into thinking that
it has the keyboard attatched.

Or is going into the BIOS and removing the keyboard checking the only
way?  If that is the case, I would like to know that.

Has anyone tried booting with "Manufacturing jumper" ON?
Does it boot?

Why do I want to do this?   That's because I have been using
PC's in a "semi-embedded" manner for laboratory control and
data acquisition.   These PC's run a single program started
by AUTOEXEC.BAT and nothing else.  So, no one ever touches the
keyboard, and I don't want the keyboard hanging around asking for
trouble.

In old days, I would have done these things with a single board
CPU and software burnt into EEPROMs.  But that's too much of a pain
when we develop a box for QUANTITY ONE typical.
With current pricing for PC's, it's a lot cheaper and faster to do
it this way, especially in university labs where any software will never
be completed before a research project is completed.

I would appreciate any help on this.

Izumi Ohzawa
Group in Neurobiology/Optometry
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720

izumi@violet.berkeley.edu
..ucbvax!violet!izumi