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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!paladin.american.edu!gatech!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!news.dfn.de!news.uni-jena.de!news.HRZ.HAB-Weimar.DE!News.HTWM.De!news.tu-chemnitz.de!irz401!uriah.heep!news From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: console device Date: 17 Jan 1996 01:26:24 GMT Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden Lines: 30 Message-ID: <4dhj80$r9@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <4d9fci$sga@dailyplanet.netpath.net> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.3 deasey@server1.netpath.net (Geoffrey Deasey) writes: > Is there a way to change the console device while booting from the > floppy ? I have a machine that has a Link terminal as the console. > No KB no Monitor. It is running Linux (Slackware, really old). Or > do I have to get a monitor ? There's a method to dynamically reassign the console to the first serial port, by entering -h at the boot prompt. Obviously, you need a keyboard for this. Alternatively, you can rebuild and reinstall the bootblocks with the option FORCE_SERIAL_CONSOLE uncommented in the Makefile. The sources are under /sys/i386/boot/biosboot/. Don't forget to disklabel -B your drive in order to install the bootblocks. The third way is to auto-probe the existance of a keyboard. Alas, the designers of the PeeCee forgot to add a BIOS function to query the BIOS autoprobing result (apparently, they never assumed that somebody could work without a keyboard :), and due to various crappy PC hardware, the existing keyboard probe function in the boot code tends to jam about 10 % of all existing keyboards. That's why autoprobing has been disabled until somebody feels to fix it... -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)