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Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 19:40:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mike Newell <mnewell@kaizen.net>
To: Greg Laslett <abseil@thehub.com.au>
cc: "'questions@freebsd.org'" <questions@FreeBSD.org>
Subject: Re: Serial Console
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On Sat, 4 May 1996, Greg Laslett wrote:

> I would like to do away with my VGA card and keyboard, using a serial terminal as a console via COM1 instead.

I think you'll have to have a VGA card; from what I've seen most BIOSen
consider the lack of a video card to be fatal and they won't get past
POST.  Many modern BIOSen will let you leave off the keyboard [some
require a flag be set], although older ones will generate a "Keyboard
error - press F1 to continue" sort of error.... :-)

> Can anyone suggest a reasonable CONFIG file to build a kernel that will do
> this ?

I just set "options COMCONSOLE" in my config file, built and installed
the kernel, and it worked fine.  You can't [surprise!] use the com1 port
as a SLIP/PPP line, but who'd want to anyway?

Mike