On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 03:31:48PM -0400, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: > This is not a "Dell-specific BIOS hack". Dear child, ask your folks about > PCs. I think it was only this decade that PCs would actually boot This decade being the 2010s? :-) > *without* a keyboard. EVERY PC EVER MADE before would not. It's true that really old PCs couldn't boot without a keyboard which lead to the joke "Keyboard missing. Press F1 to continue" However the change to the hardware to allow a keyboardless boot came in a lot longer than a decade ago. It might have been with the 386 based hardware, but I really can't remember. I know I had a PC built in the 90s which has a BIOS option to halt on all errors, or halt on all errors except keyboard. Here's a PDF from 1998 showing the option http://www.elhvb.com/mboards/luckytech/P6BX2.pdf I'm sure sufficient googling would find even older examples. Of course modern PCs may not even _have_ a keyboard port; USB only! -- rgds Stephen