Installed Slackware 14.0, 32-bot box, old-timey purple plug, worked fine until I booted the thing and... no keyboard?

Did I miss something somewhere?

Is that like a PS2 Cable?

Uh, I dunno what the heck it is -- it's round, about 3/8" diameter, is purple plastic -- not the real, real old kind, probably the predecessor to USB. Dang thing worked during installation but doesn't on boot. Thinking there's some rc.whatever but I can't seem to locate which one?

Edit

OK, looked at the image, it looks like the purple thing on that adapter (and, of course, I don't have such a thing in stock). Mumble, grumble, damned thing used to work! Arrgghh!

You have a PS2 keyboard.
Does it have any issues say, in BIOS, or booting "single" mode?
Is it only not "there" part|some|all of the time?

It is a PS/2 keyboard connector and should work without an special modifications to your setup.
IIRC, purple is the PS/2 keyboard connector and green is the PS/2 mouse connector. Yes. Just dug around in my box of "goodies" and purple is the keyboard connector.

There seems to be atkbd and psmouse modules for those purple and green plugs, respectively. However, looking at Pat's slackware-current kernel configs, atkbd should be compiled into the kernel already. At what point do you lose the keyboard? In other words, can you use the up/down arrow keys for LILO, but can't use it for console login? Or is that OK, and it stops working when you start X11?

If you brew your own kernels, all the stuff needed for AT keyboards and PS/2 mice should be here from a `make menuconfig` menu:

Device drivers -> Input device support

I'm not good at X11 keyboard issues--prone to fits of rage--but know that the setting to enable evdev is on this page. There's also a "Hardware I/O ports" item at the bottom of that page that has a couple of subtle settings that may or may not make a difference.

Well, dang it, I shut down, waited a while, swore at some other nonsense, then turned it on with the PS/2 keyboard connected -- fool thing works, dunno why.

BTW this is a stock 14.0 32-bit stable installation with all patches applied before X ever got started. No fiddling with BIOS, no kustum kernel, no nuthin' nowhere. Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky either but... through the magic of electronics the blasted thing works.

Thanks to all for the input, I suspect it needed a full power down between installation and initial boot ('cause that's what didn't work!) -- took hooking up a USB keyboard to get control of it. Who know what evil lurks in old hardware (it's a Dell Inspiron 8400 recently resurrected to become a data base server).?

All is well that ends.

No problem. Keep track of you did, in case you have to backtrack. I have one old Dell where it helps to have a USB keyboard plugged in, to help wedge the daughterboard in place so any plugged-in memory sticks won't lose connection. There's another Dell where if I don't hit the F10 key within that one-second window before the CMOS beep, the system will boot without showing the boot menu: If I hit the F10 key more than twice, it declares the keyboard non-functional and boots the system with no keyboard. Who knows, indeed...

Just FYI...

PS2 keyboards shouldn't be treated like USB devices. You can't plug and unplug them when ever the urge strikes. PS2 keyboards are meant to be plugged in with the computer powered off and NOT unplugged while the computer it powered on. They are not meant to be hot-pluggable like USB devices.

PS2 connectors can have poor electrical connections. Some unintentional tugging on a almost too-short keyboard cable can result in problems. These problems are usually fixed by powering off the computer and re-inserting the PS2 plug. Repeated abuse of the PS2 connector on the motherboard usually decreases the reliability of the connection.

Just my experience, I'm not accusing tronayne of being a serial computer abuser.

Well, I thought it was kind of odd that doing a full installation from scratch worked just fine, partition the disk with cfdisk, tippy-type all the needed info, hit the carriage return, use the arrow keys, the whole bit. Get to the end, exit the setup, drawer opens, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del (as instructed) to reboot and... nuthin' with the keyboard (never has happened before installing quite a few Slackware versions on more than a few platforms over quite a few years, PS/2 or USB). First thought: somebody's "fixed" glibc, the kernel, who knows what, oh, good, now what.

So, another lesson learned during a wasted youth -- power the thing down if it's one of these keyboards and it doesn't work after installation? OK, no big deal, just go with the flow and be done with it (before chasing shadows).

On to productive things.