On Jul 10,  3:51pm, Steve Woodford wrote:
} On Fri, 9 Jul 1999, Matthias Drochner wrote:
} > prlw1@newn.cam.ac.uk said:
} > > Yes - the Device busy messages didn't seem to matter on other
} > > computers... Then again, this is the only one with a ATI Technologies
} > > Mach64 GW (rev. 0x7a) in it. 
} > 
} > At which point does it freak out? What happens if you avoid
} > virtual console switching completely? (might be that something
} > in the switch process messes up the graphics card)
} 
} FWIW, I had exactly the same problem with an ATI Mach64. It started after
} I added a 2-port ISA serial card (go figure). During boot, the console
} would go blank until the xdm login appeared.

     I haven't seen an answer to this, so...

     The ATI Mach series of cards emulates the IBM 8514/A (and more).
The IBM 8514/A used the same I/O ports as com3 does, so this means that
those two devices can't be reliably used in the same system.  This is
also the reason that com3 is commented out in the GENERIC kernel.

} I tracked it down to something 'ttyflags -a' was doing in /etc/rc.
} Commenting out all uneccesary crud in /etc/ttys cured it for me. It didn't
} seem to be sufficient to just mark ttys as `off'.

     Probably because once you took the flags out, the port was left
alone.  The process of setting the flags must have done something to
the video card, that it didn't like.

}-- End of excerpt from Steve Woodford