on 4/19/00 3:59 AM, Erik Fair at fair@clock.org wrote:

> The 9600/200 is in the class of the first round of Apple's PCI-based
> PowerMacintoshes, with OpenFirmware 1.0.5 - it barely works at all,
> let alone well enough to actually drive the keyboard and whatever PCI
> video card you have there (ATI, I bet?).

Actually, I recently installed on two of these machines, and you _can_ use
the OF console.  The trick is that you need to tell OF how to find the video
card.  ("screen" doesn't work on these old beasts.)  On both of the machines
I used, the video card was in slot E, so using System Disk to set the
following:

input: kbd
output: pci2/@e

along with the "Stop Boot at Open Firmware Prompt" checkbox worked just
fine.  There are a number of other ways to write the path to a PCI card so
that OF will understand it, but I believe this is the shortest.  ;)

I believe System Disk defaults the output to /chaos/control on the 9600,
even though it doesn't have any built-in video.  This is probably because
OF 1.0.5 is also the version used in the 7500 & friends, which _do_ use
/chaos/control.

Also, "pci2" is a devalias to the second PCI bus on these machines.  If
your video card is in a different slot, you may have to use "pci1".

> You need to be talking to this computer on its modem port at 38400
> 8n1 from a terminal or terminal emulator running on another computer.
> Painful, I know, but this is how it most often has to be done with
> that vintage of Macintosh (I know, I've got a bunch here).

-- monroe
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monroe Williams                                         monroe@pobox.com