On Fri, 25 Feb 2000, Wilko Bulte wrote:

=> On Fri, Feb 25, 2000 at 02:16:46AM -0500, Geoff Adams wrote:
=> > On 2-24-2000 8:36 PM, Hal Murray at murray@pa.dec.com wrote:
=> > 
=> > >> "set server on" IIRC;
=> > > 
=> > > If somebody verifies that, we should probably add it to the FAQ.
=> > 
=> > I'd be curious if someone could verify that, too.  However, the only thing
=> > that I'm aware of to set the 3000/300 to use a serial console (and not check
=> > for a keyboard) is to move jumper W2 from pins 1 and 2 (graphical console)
=> > to pins 2 and 3 (serial console).  This is a four-position jumper; I forget
=> > what setting it to pins 3 and 4 gets you, but I suspect it's a field
=> > engineer debugging thing.
=> 
=> I'm not sure if the 3000/300 is different as far as autobooting is
=> concerned, but my 3000/400 manual suggests
=> 
=> 	"set auto_action boot"

I think perhaps two things are being confused here: how to boot in the
presence of errors, and how to select the serial console.  The W2 jumper
is one way explicitly to enable the serial console on a 3000/300.

The "set auto_action boot" will cause the machine to boot from power-on
(instead of halting at the PROM prompt) *unless* there are hardware test
errors.  My reading of the "set server on" (if there is such a
beast:) is that this is a way to tell it to ignore those (keyboard and
video) errors and boot anyway.

It would be great to know if this works, because my 3000/300 fails the
framebuffer hardware test, and so won't boot from power on.  (That's
annoying, because I don't have a keyboard and monitor for it, so I have
to boot via the serial port connection from my DECstation 3100.)

Once I set my DEC combo back up again (in the near future), I can test
this out (auto boot in the presence of errors).

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu

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