On Sun, Sep 19, 2004 at 12:03:08PM -0400, Steve Bellovin wrote:
> I have a NetBSD (-current, if it matters, which I suspect it does not) 
> that was configured for a 'com0' console.  I've now moved the disk to 
> another machine where I want it to have a 'pc' console.  How can I 
> change it?  I've tried using an install CD to get the boot prompt, 
> saying 'consdev pc' followed by 'boot hd0a:netbsd -s'; it gives the 
> 'Hit return' prompt, but never listens to keyboard input.  I've also 
> tried rerunning installboot, again to no avail.

The 'console type' is stored at the beginning of the n-1th bootstrap
code by installboot. eg (from dd if=/dev/rwd0a count=5 | hexdump -C):

00000400  eb 7e 89 f6 d1 b6 86 78  78 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |.~.....xx.......|
00000410  0a 00 00 00 xx 00 00 00  80 25 00 00 00 00 00 00  |.........%......|
00000420  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|

The 'xx' is 0 for the vga console, 1 for com0 etc.

However, since the values used by the 'boot' program are passed to the
kernel it looks like you have a different problem.

	David

-- 
David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk