kernel won't boot on a smp machine

[Dragos <dragos.delcea@farmexim.ro>]

hello,
the subject is a little misleading, it boots, but the keyboard wont work.
let me tell you the story...
assembled a dual machine PIII500/i440bx; took a disk from another machine 
(debian woody) to test if it comes up (the dual machine doesn't have it's own 
disk yet); the POST is ok, I can enter the BIOS, make changes, etc...; 
however, at some point during booting, the keyboard stops working, so I 
cannot login; it was a kernel compiled by me (2.4.10), so I thought it was my 
mistake; ok, booted 2.4.9-686 (debian), same behaviour; if I boot in single 
user mode, it suddenly works! withn every kernel! the keyboard is ok (it's 
the one that I use now), the other system which the disk was taken from is an 
mendocino 633 with the same chipset, i440bx, except is uniprocessor.
I do not have a clue about this, it's like the kernel has no driver compiled 
for the keyboard. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the kernels boots on their 
system, and the keyboard is standard (PS2).
Anybody on this?

dragos