From owner-freebsd-alpha Tue Sep 3 10: 2:51 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1952037B400 for ; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 10:02:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gnah.bolet.org (gnah.bolet.org [80.65.226.87]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AFB9F43E6A for ; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 10:02:47 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from pornin@bolet.org) Received: from gnah.bolet.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by gnah.bolet.org (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id g83H2ikU048060 for ; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 19:02:45 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from pornin@bolet.org) Received: (from pornin@localhost) by gnah.bolet.org (8.12.5/8.12.5/Submit) id g83H2giw048059 for alpha@freebsd.org; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 19:02:42 +0200 (CEST) Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 19:02:40 +0200 From: Thomas Pornin To: alpha@freebsd.org Subject: AXPpci33 <-> Sparc sun4c serial cable Message-ID: <20020903190239.A48033@gnah.bolet.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Hello, I have at home an AXPpci33 machine running happily FreeBSD-4.6. This is a standard NoName board, with some PCI slots, onboard SCSI, a 166 MHz cpu (21066 I believe) and 32 MBytes of ram. The board features a serial port, which seems to be recognized by FreeBSD: sio0: configured irq 4 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0 sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 on isa0 sio0: type 16550A sio0: interrupting at ISA irq 4 sio1: reserved for low-level i/o I shall soon acquire an old IPC Sun SparcStation. Those stations can use a serial console, and are actually supposed to switch to a serial console in the absence of any keyboard (there might be a switch on the board but that's not a problem). If I remember correctly, the DB25 connector is female on those stations, and it is possible that the pin layout is non-standard. What I would like to do is connecting the serial ports of the Alpha and the Sparc machines so that I could control the Sparc console from a shell on the Alpha machine. I have two questions: ** What software should I use on the Alpha box ? I know there exists some program called "minicom", which has a FreeBSD port, that might be adequate. But is this the standard solution ? ** What is the layout of the serial cable to use ? I suspect that there are non-standard serial ports on some Alpha machines for the following reason: I once had a Multia, which is basically a NoName board in a small box. That Multia could use a vt220 as console when no keyboard was connected. A simple null-modem cable worked (those cables sold as "doom-cable", with a DB9 and a DB25 at each end). I tried the same setting on my current Alpha machine, and it did not work. Some sort of reference on serial cables would be much appreciated. There is some info on: http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/Hardware/Misc/serial.html but it is only partial. Thanks for any answer, --Thomas Pornin To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message