Re: Why Adam Savage Won't Trust USB Keys - YouTube

On Wed, 4/8/2026 5:04 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
> On 2026/4/8 20:18:48, Andy Burns wrote:
>> "Mr. Man-wai Chang" wrote:
>>
>>> Why isn't WIndows listing all devices including strange keyboards in 
>>> Device Manager?
>>
>> What makes it a "strange" keyboard, as opposed to a perfectly normal 
>> keyboard?  A HID is a HID, I'd be annoyed if my laptop's internal 
>> keyboard was btroken, I plugged in an external one, and got the 
>> equivalent of "do you want to use this keyboard?  type Y or N"
> 
> I don't think I would, at least the first time; it would reassure me (to
> some extent) that the hardware-monitoring was doing _something_ to
> protect me. I'd be a bit annoyed if it asked me every startup (or every
> time I plugged in the good keyboard), but not very, and certainly not
> the first time.
> 

Hardware monitoring ? What's that ? :-)

If the external keyboard is Bluetooth or Logitech Unifying,
then maybe some sort of correlated response is needed as
a "pairing ceremony" after the keyboard power comes on.
The user "expects" to be queried if they just
turned on their Bluetooth keyboard. The BIOS is not known
for sophistication, like keeping a lot of metadata
about this and that. The BIOS *does* keep the DMI table,
which you can dump if you want to see what is in there.

Even today, BIOS seem to use a single thread of execution,
and they may be in a loop waiting for input (instead of being
event driven). This may make it difficult to be checking
on unrelated things for activity. I notice these things,
by monitoring the PC with a Kill-O-Watt meter, and seeing
whether the power consumed equals "single core railed" amount
or not :-) That's how I can estimate the design style.
if the BIOS was event-driven entirely, the power would
be 33 watts or so. Only the OS drops that low.

   Paul