The key board is not functional during the initial boot from the LiveCD for 1.4rc3. The install CD for Slackware 8.1 boots fine, and the keyboard works. Was planning install minimal Slackware and bootstrap gentoo from Slackware and stage 1
Could you please give some system specs?
The system is a Dell Dimension 8250 with a pentium 4 processor, 512 MB RAM, and a 60 Gb hard disk. It also has a DVD/CD-RW drive. The keyboard and mouse are both Dell brand, and the mouse is an IMPS/2-type mouse. The system comes with a SoundBlaster sound card, and nVidia GeForce video card with 128 Mb RAM
I found out still more information when a kernel recompile made my keyboard unusable. The cause was enabling the uhci modules in the kernel config; the system started looking for a USB keyboard over the PS/2 keyboard once it got the USB set up. I recompiled without the UHCI options, and everything works.
Go ahead and mark this as resolved. I thought to look in the BIOS set-up for the Dell Dimension 8250, and turned off the built-in USB controller. The kernel on the CD then picked up the PS/2 keyboard instead of expecting a USB keyboard
as per comments.