On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, Henry B. Hotz wrote:

> At 9:41 AM -0500 12/10/01, Gregory Smith wrote:
> >	I have a rev. a ibook on which the screen has died (completely).
> >The machine's got a pretty good processor in it compared to what I
> >normally use (an old alpha), and I'd like to try to get NetBSD working on
> >it. Here are the problems:
> >1) no serial ports
> >2) how to force OF to serial console, and
> >3) how to force netbsd to serial console
> >
> >	I read on this list a long time ago that someone was able to get a
> >serial console on a USB-only machine like this iBook using a USB-serial
> >adapter, so I may be able to get past 1 and 2, and I'm sure 3 is just a
> >matter of passing in the correct arguments to the kernel, or at very
> >worst, compiling one specially for serial console (which I could
> >cross-compile, yuck).
> >	Any experiences or useful information on this matter would be
> >appreciated, I'm hesitant to buy a serial adapter unless I have a good
> >chance of getting it working. Thanks
>
> As another option have you considered putting a VGA monitor on the
> thing?  If you can get video mirroring going maybe you don't need the
> screen?  Of course if the problem is the graphics electronics you
> still loose.

	The graphics electronics work fine AFAIK; it's the LCD itself
that's unusable. Unfortunately, I'm unaware of how to connect a VGA
monitor to a rev. a ibook, without a VGA port.

Gregory