I downloaded the 1.1a boot cd with some premade features (the 100 meg variety), inserted into my system at home, and tried to boot. At the usb device detection phase, it hung. It correctly identified both devices: M$ joystick and a logitech optical wheel mouse, then stopped. When I removed both devices and used the same mouse with a ps/2 adapter, the boot proceeded fine and I got to the bash prompt to begin the install. other hardware: soyo 6ba+3 mainboard, celeron2 566 (overclocked to 850), 384 MB PC100 RAM, voodoo3 agp video, ne2k pci ethernet, sblive value pci sound board, adaptec scsi (uses aic78xx driver) with a scsi zip drive (100) and nikon ls-30 scanner, sony 48x ide cdrom, plextor 32/12/10 ide cdrw, 20 GB maxtor ide HD (win2000), 15 GB maxtor ide HD (slave, for linux), ps/2 keyboard. For reference, Mandrake 8.1 and 8.2 have been ok with the usb devices plugged in, but Mandrake is so bloated...
It turns out that it is not hanging, but simply displaying the usb detection results after getting to the language question and waiting for input. Hitting enter allows the install to proceed normally. So this is really a usability/cosmetic issue.
