> What is the difference between XL24 and XS24? My R4000 has XS24 graphics

XL is your basic "dumb framebuffer"; XS has real GE/RE hardware underneath.
Elan is more of the same (that is, XS-XS24-XS24Z-Elan are architecturally
similar, Elan just has "more of it"). ergo, XL is "trivially" supportable,
the rest are proprietary enough that the poor documentation is an issue.

> We all know the problem of being unable to use an SGI monitor and the
> graphics console because of the loader/console intercepting many
> important keystrokes. I seem to recall someone mentioning on here once
> that they might have a patch for this problem.

in most cases: the system will go serial prom console if there isn't a
keyboard attached at powerup time. for indy/o2 (and presumably indigo)
there is a motherboard jumper that says "ignore nvram settings"; you
generally have to do this with the case open (remove jumper, power on,
install jumper, set desired prom settings) because settings don't stick
with the jumper removed.