I'm having a weird problem. I've sort of solved it, but I have not found any reference to it at all, so I figured it would be work posting.

I have 2 keyboard, a very old PS/2 and one month old MS USB keyboard.
Both work fine to access the BIOS and in the OS (I tried ubuntu 7.10 and freeBSD 7.0)

Now during grub neither would react, same for the freebsd live cd bootloader.
At the ubuntu installation the USB keyboard would work around half of the time.

The PS/2 didn't work in grub at all.

But when I inserted both keyboards, both would work fine, in grub and the boot screens of the live cds.

In the bios I had turned on legacy support for USB, keyboard, mouse and storage. In order to see if it changed things, I put only the keyboard support on.

Now my USB would also work half of the time in grub. But my PS/2 didn't work at all anymore, and having both keyboard connected prevented the computer from booting at all (it didn't even beep).

Hardware:
P4 3 Ghz
MSI PM8M-V
Bios version numbers:
Award 6.00 PG
W7194VMS v5.1 080107 09:19:39

I'm wondering if there is a way to make the keyboard work normally in grub.

Thirler

yes I am not hardware guru but what I think is happening is this

bios to grub......grub not seeing any keyboard action.....so grub timeout is effective....jumps to initrd and kernel......if kernel has usb or ps/2 k/b support....pressing escape should show kernel messages if you had a kernel splash screen.

usb or ps/2 are kernel modules or can be compiled in.

2) but I have a ps/2 k/b that works with grub so grub and bios are bonding well.

3) in my bios I have a setting for plugnplay....turned off.

4) based on your good troubleshooting efforts so far.....I think it is bios related.
heres my reasons

when both plugged in...they work in grub
when only one.....ps/2 never.....usb sometimes

5) maybe you can find some settings to play with in the bios....because I think that is the answer?