From owner-freebsd-hardware Wed Nov 8 8:41:35 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from arg1.demon.co.uk (arg1.demon.co.uk [194.222.34.166]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 748D537B4CF; Wed, 8 Nov 2000 08:41:32 -0800 (PST) Received: by arg1.demon.co.uk (Postfix, from userid 300) id E42879B0F; Wed, 8 Nov 2000 16:41:26 +0000 (GMT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by arg1.demon.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id DC9F35D08; Wed, 8 Nov 2000 16:41:26 +0000 (GMT) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 16:41:26 +0000 (GMT) From: Andrew Gordon X-Sender: arg@server.arg.sj.co.uk To: Mike Smith Cc: spork@fasttrackmonkey.com, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Server-class mobo's In-Reply-To: <200011072319.eA7NJBF33525@mass.osd.bsdi.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tue, 7 Nov 2000, Mike Smith wrote: > > > > Anyone have any ideas on who besides Intel uses this Phoenix BIOS that > > integrates a full serial console (from power on to OS boot)? > > > > http://www.phoenix.com/platform/serverbios.html > > > > The only feature that intrigues me is the serial console; very useful for > > colo'd servers. It allows you into the normal BIOS screens as well as any > > SCSI controller/RAID controller setups. > > > > Intel is a bit pricey for the current 133MHz bus boards... > > Tyan are doing this on the S2500 and S2510 boards, which BSDi are > building into our current family of 1U and 2U server systems. > > Note that most of these BIOS-serial designs are of the screen-scraper > variety, so you still need a video card. Ugh. The version used in Intel's own 1U servers (http://www.intel.com/network/products/isp1100.htm) is indeed a screen-scraper, but you _don't_ need a video card installed: there's no on-board video, but it still works. I guess that it maps in some of the main DRAM using the same technique as used for shadowing the BIOS ROM - but since it works without problems, I haven't investigated too deeply. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message