Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 14:46:35 +0200 (SAST) From: Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com> To: des@flood.ping.uio.no (Dag-Erling Smorgrav) Cc: rnordier@nordier.com (Robert Nordier), jdp@polstra.com (John Polstra), mike@smith.net.au, stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: equivalent to "-P" in boot.config Message-ID: <199905151246.OAA23595@ceia.nordier.com> In-Reply-To: <xzpemki36tl.fsf@localhost.ping.uio.no> from Dag-Erling Smorgrav at "May 15, 1999 01:34:14 pm"
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Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote: > Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com> writes: > > The -P is completely handled by boot2. The effect is to set the > > bootblock -D (dual) and -h (serial) options, if no keyboard is found. > > Unfortunately, the keyboard probe returns false positives on far too > many motherboards for this to be of any use. The new bootblocks don't do a keyboard "probe" as such. The present test is whether an "enhanced" keyboard is installed, as determined by the BIOS (any standard i386 keyboard qualifies as enhanced, except -- in some cases -- when running under i386 emulation). Whether this works is really a function of the BIOS rather than the hardware. It will inevitably require the keyboard is (un)plugged before POST, and some BIOSes may require that the presence or absence of the keyboard is explicitly noted in BIOS setup. The approach certainly does work in a substantial number of cases: and, where it does work, it is highly likely to work reliably (since, if any code understands the given hardware, it is likely to be the BIOS). However, if there is a concensus that the approach used in the old (biosboot) bootblocks, which attempt to interrogate the keyboard controller directly, gives better results in practice, I don't have any problem with changing to that way of doing things. A primary constraint, though, is that only ~100 bytes are available in boot2 for keyboard detection logic, by whatever means. -- Robert Nordier To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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