From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Jul 24 18:44:40 1995 Return-Path: questions-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.11/8.6.6) id SAA00680 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 24 Jul 1995 18:44:40 -0700 Received: from lupine.nsi.nasa.gov (lupine.nsi.nasa.gov [198.116.2.100]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.11/8.6.6) with ESMTP id SAA00674 ; Mon, 24 Jul 1995 18:44:39 -0700 Received: (from mnewell@localhost) by lupine.nsi.nasa.gov (8.6.12/8.6.12) id VAA22795; Mon, 24 Jul 1995 21:42:32 -0400 Date: Mon, 24 Jul 1995 21:42:31 -0400 (EDT) From: "Michael C. Newell" To: "Justin T. Gibbs" cc: Joe McGuckin , questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Headless/keyboardless booting... In-Reply-To: <199507250135.SAA00350@freefall.cdrom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: questions-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 24 Jul 1995, Justin T. Gibbs wrote: > >Generally, especially older PCs required a keyboard. Some clever person > >decided it made sense to issue errors like: > > > > keyboard error > > Press to continue. > > This isn't stupid at all. If not having a keyboard is a fatal error, by > using F1 as the way to dismiss the error, it ensures that a keyboard is > installed. :-) Actually, I didn't say it was stupid... I said it was clever. :-) Seriously what WAS (IMHO) short sighted was to REQUIRE a keyboard. I still have an old PC that won't pass POST without a keyboard present and has no BIOS option to circumvent the situation. It's really annoying to have a headless PC that requires a keyboard. Fortunately, as I said in my original posting, most modern BIOSen don't have this restriction. Unfortunately I *DID* run across one 486 mother board recently (sorry I don't remember the details; it's a friends PC) that DID require a keyboard. Big time bummer! Thanks, Mike +--------------------------------------+------------------------------------+ |Mike Newell | The opinions expressed herein are | |NASA Science Internet Network Systems | my own, and do not necessarily | |Sterling Software, Inc. | reflect those of the NSI program, | |MNewell@nsipo.nasa.gov | Sterling Software, NASA, or anyone | |+1-202-434-8954 | else. | +--------------------------------------+------------------------------------+ | work: http://www.eco.nsi.nasa.gov/~mnewell | | home: http://www.newell.arlington.va.us | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+