At 4:05 AM 1/4/95, Erik Bjorling wrote:
>Ok Im going to try this again....
>
>Mac IIx 8 Meg RAM 80 Meg Hard Drive at ID 4 or 0 or 1
>67Meg Unix partition, 2.5 meg Mac OS
>System 7.1 bare on mac side
>Mac II color video card (toby) in 2nd slot from power supply
>Or Macintosh High Res card in same slot
>Apple Extended Keyboard
>Apple original ADB mouse
>Mode 32 with 32-bit addressing enabled

Hey. You *are* using Mode32-7.5, right? it's much nicer, and co-exists
happily with System 7.1 as well as 7.5.

>Monitor dpeth set to 1 (B&W)
>
>Fresh install of MacBSD Etc10, Base10
>Booter 1.4 or 1.6 makes no difference in any of the tests except with the
>mrg kernel I only tried 1.6.

[various kernels hang. this one works:]

>*Kernel mrgkit1.0a*
>Single User, diagnostics on, no serial stuff, RAM autosize off.
>Result
>All grey bars lots of text then
>Changing root device to sd0a.
>swapping 401 and 401.                     <-This ALWAYS Happens WHY?
>swapdev = 401, dumpdev = ffffffff.        <-And What does it mean?
>Enter pathname of shell or RETURN for sh: <RETURN>
>Warning running as root with dot in path.
>#                                         <-Seems to work for now...Though
>ADB                                  #
><-Bug still happens occasionally
>
>I can not get the serial console to work or serial echo.
>I want to real bad though. ;-)

I had a Wyse 50 that I was trying to use as a console; unfortunately it
blew a couple of capacitors in the power supply before I got things
working.

>Sometimes I have seen a NuBus error of some type, but it blazed by so fast
>I couldnt read it. It did not occur consistently, as in none of these
>trials did I see it.

Try moving the Toby card around. I never can remember if the first slot is
near the drive cage, or next to the power supply. I always fill the machine
starting at the drive cage, since a card in the slot next to the power
supply tends to block the airflow.

>Oh and for the record
>dt-1.0 never works - Bus Error

I never got dt to even give me any kind of error. Running it would just
instantly freeze my Mac II.

>screen-3.5.2 is great but the control codes make its use impossible.

gnu screen is workable but it is slow as hell. try doing either a 'tset
vt102' or vt220. I've seen both suggested, but using the vt220 settings
like to go wonky when you fire up something like vi.

>Would someone please explain, by example, how to set up the system for
>Serial Console use and what steps are needed to boot under
>multiuser(configure this and that file but with samples)?
>And I dont mean like a poorly written manual...
>
>Bad: you have to turn off e0 and turn on 00 in ttys.
>
>Good: Open the file /etc/ttys with a text editor. On the line with ttye0
>change off to on. Redefine the console on the line <blah> to <newblah>.

Yes, some clear, consise documentation would solve a lot of problems, and
cut down on the frequent questions. Unfortunately docs like that come from
a department of technical writers making salary, as opposed to a bunch of
kernel-compiling, makefile-writing, fstuneing hackers. cest la vie; no free
lunch and all that. Thank god for this mailing list, though!

>This would be nice and helpful. :-)

not to mention a pipe dream... ;-)

>I have a null modem adapter and all the cables.
>Terminal settings?
>baud I assume is 9600
>Parity and bits I assume is 7E1

Correct so far. From what I have absorbed; the boot messages come out as
8N1; then getty shows up and everything talks 7E1 from then on.

>Handshaking? none? Xon/Xoff? Hardware?
>8 bit control characters?
>Local Echo?

I'd hazard a guess that it would be looking for a generic vt100 type
console; thus xon/xoff, no local echo would probably do the job. Then
again, I might be being too logical. =)

>Also I made a comment in my original post about the control codes that
>appear on the console. Is this normal? Is there a way to fix them? Should
>the term be set to something other than vt100? etc? Etc?

Yeah. Like I said, try either vt102 or vt220. As I recall, dt is supposed
to like vt220 (though I've never, ever seen it work), and screen likes
vt102.

>After 11 hours of screwing around I hope this is helpful.
>And I really hope someone can help me make this all worth while.

Join the club. You don'w want to know how long it took for me to realize
that the reason that my machine refused to boot succesfully was my Daystar
'030/33 accelerator. Finally I ripped it out in desperation, (after all of
my NuBus cards, rebooting each time) and (cue choir: "Hallelujia!") the
thing booted just fine. Mind-bendingly slow, but succesfully.

The meaning of the anecdote? The mrg-kit kernel refused to boot on an '030,
but it liked the '020. I couldn't get anything else to boot regardless of
processor. Your IIx runs on an '030. Ergo, *tada*, as my father liked to
tell me, "Good luck, Charlie!"

Wanna trade machines? ;-) Good luck, you'll get things working eventually.
Then you'll start bitching about how much you want ethernet to work. =)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
busy@aloha.com              me!
Resident Quack,            "like a mass of protoplasm out to find pleasure"
Macintosh Geek                              -Hon. Congressman Newt Gingrich