From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat May 25 00:29:19 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id AAA15287 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 25 May 1996 00:29:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from zibbi.mikom.csir.co.za (zibbi.mikom.csir.co.za [146.64.24.58]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id AAA15278 for ; Sat, 25 May 1996 00:29:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from jhay@localhost) by zibbi.mikom.csir.co.za (8.7.5/8.7.3) id JAA26840; Sat, 25 May 1996 09:28:44 +0200 (SAT) From: John Hay Message-Id: <199605250728.JAA26840@zibbi.mikom.csir.co.za> Subject: Re: The view from here (was Re: ISDN Compression Load on CPU) To: imp@village.org (Warner Losh) Date: Sat, 25 May 1996 09:28:44 +0200 (SAT) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199605242259.QAA16933@rover.village.org> from Warner Losh at "May 24, 96 04:59:45 pm" X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL16 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > : Some obvious modifications would be: > : - Use the serial port as console > : - Make the lack of keyboard and video a non-error > > I'd love to see something like that. Would save me $20/machine that I > press into router service :-). > Most motherboard/BIOS combinations allow that nowadays. I have a lot of machines (PC's) that don't have a keyboard, screencard and screen. I manage them through the serial port or through the network. I only need a screen and keyboard if the CMOS setup has to change and that is normally only in the beginning. I use bootblocks that is a little modified to actually fail if their is no keyboard which is getting closer lately with the addition of the PROBE_KEYBOARD option. The other change that I make is to modify the probe routine of syscons to fail if there is no keyboard. Otherwise the system panic when it tries to do bcopy's to a nonexistant screencard. These two changes allow me to put a screen and keyboard into a sick machine and it will then use that and not the serial port anymore. John -- John Hay -- John.Hay@mikom.csir.co.za