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To: "Gary T. Corcoran" <garycorc@idt.net>
cc: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, Warner Losh <imp@village.org>,
        freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Libretto 50 - US Version and PAO 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 05 Nov 1997 01:34:04 CDT."
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Date: Wed, 05 Nov 1997 17:44:47 +1030
From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
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> > Keyboard hotkeys.  At least on the Toshiba and Sharp systems I have
> > access to these hit the SMI interrupt, which is handled by the BIOS.
> 
> What is an 'SMI' interrupt?  I've never heard of that one...

SMI is the System Management Interrupt.  It's a 486 feature that 
provides something like an NMI that runs in a completely separate 
context.

> And are you saying that the BIOS can be (is) used _while_ running FreeBSD?

The SMI BIOS is completely independant, and yes, it can run even if 
FreeBSD is running.  Other parts of the BIOS (eg. APM) are currently 
used, and I'm working on more just now.

> On a different (but somewhat related :) note: could you please tell me what
> the key sequence is to switch *back* to the X screen after you've switched
> over to a text mode virtual terminal?  I never did find it in the docs
> I have, and thought one of you might know off the top of your head...

The X screen is running on a vty, so just switch back to that vty; 
normally it'd be on vty3, so alt-f3 will do the trick.

mike