Thanks RC! thats 'exactly' what i was looking for.

im going to try changing /etc/sysconfig/keyboard to"
KBCHARSET=C
KEYBOARD=us
KEYTABLE="/etc/sysconfig/console/default.kmap"

and see what happens. i just hope 'keyboarddrake', (which seems to uncompress and load a choosen file in i386) doesn't get in the way.