Paul,
No Joy yet because it's still on my table, but I got everything to work with the USB splitter and got XP drivers for the modem and new printer added.
CaOperator,
Thanks for your comments.
I'm not sure about this, but I'm suspecting that the front USB ports on this machine may be secondary accessory ports and not immediately enabled during bootup. The rear ports are damaged though so there's no choice at the moment. But, whatever the reason is it does not take any input from the keyboard at all during bootup.
Bill
