Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 10:18:29 -0500 From: "Eric L. Hernes" <erich@jake.lodgenet.com> To: "Michael C. Newell" <mnewell@lupine.nsi.nasa.gov> Cc: Joe McGuckin <joe@via.net>, questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Headless/keyboardless booting... Message-ID: <199507251518.KAA02274@jake.lodgenet.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 25 Jul 1995 10:33:21 EDT." <Pine.SUN.3.91.950725103124.23709B-100000@lupine.nsi.nasa.gov>
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> On Tue, 25 Jul 1995, Eric L. Hernes wrote: > > > We've got over a thousand pc's here booting without keyboards OR video > > cards. Mostly run SCO unix and xenix. I've personally set up three > > FreeBSD machines without keyboards or video cards. Most of the motherboards > > are micronics. The newest one is a pci/pentium based critter which has > > been discontinued, M54si, I believe. > > Cool!! What do you do to get past the BIOS POST? In my case, every > motherboard I've tried (mostly AMI and Phoenix BIOSen) just gave "beep > codes" when powered up without a video card. Note that it's OK not to > have a monitor; but they had to have a card... > Well, I can't say for sure what color the bios is. We disable the keyboard and video in the bios. It *does* give beep code errors, but we just ignore them, in fact we've come to expect them to indicate that a machine is booting :). For most of the newer Micronics, the beeps go something like long-short-long-short. Some of the older ones were just two beeps, (I think, but I can't remember for sure). Booting does take a bit longer especially with lots of ram because you have to wait for the memory test. Also, its kind of flying blind, cause you really have no idea what's happening if the machine doesn't boot. The biggest problem was with the pci/pentium boards. We were close to having our hardware guys build a dongle to trick the machine into booting, but alas, disabling POST errors in the bios fixed it. (this was hidden under something like the fourth submenu of the third menu of the bios setup). > Thanks, > > Mike > > hope this helps. eric. -- erich@lodgenet.com erich@rrnet.com
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