> I'm interested in running a few PC's without any video cards on them (the
> idea here is to make some minimal systems for home to serve as routers or
> home automation controllers, but I digress :-) ).

Yup, I'm messing with the ramdisk driver for a diskless router scenario.

> Anyone know if it's possible to run a PC without a video card?  I've looked
> at the COMCONSOLE stuff in com.c, and it seems to be sorta what I want, but
> I don't get access to the BIOS I/O for stuff like the boot blocks.

I have no problems using COMCONSOLE, though I do have pc0 defined and a
video card.  I would assume you can comment out pc0.

> I tried booting the beater 386 I have here without a video card; it just
> booted, ran for a few seconds, then rebooted (reason unknown, unfortunately
> :-().  None of the BIOS I/O appeared on the terminal I had hooked to COM1.

You need to edit /sys/arch/i386/boot/Makefile and uncomment the
following line:
CPPFLAGS+=-DSERIAL

This will cause the boot block to use the com port.  I haven't tried
using the boot code this way, but I know it compiles.
You might want to look into the netboot code, and compile it for a
serial port also.  Then you boot off of another box, and don't need a
hard drive, or floppy drive, etc in your router box.  (though you need
something to boot from)
I have often wanted a PC BIOS that communicated with the serial port,
and allowed CMOS configuration, etc.  Haven't seen one yet.

-Andrew
> 
> I know, I know .... you can get a video card very cheap, but I'd still like
> to think it was possible somehow.
> 
> --Ken
> 


-- 
============================ Real 32bit multi-tasking UN*X System
Andrew Gillham             | TCP/IP,NFS,PPP,4.4BSD-lite,multi-user
gillham@andrews.edu        | i386,sparc,alpha,mac68k,amiga,others
LAN/WAN/NW/UN*X specialist |   ---> http://www.NetBSD.org <---