>> 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

I didn't notice this.  Thanks for the tip!

>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)

Speaking of the netboot code ... I was looking at it, and I noticed that
it looks _real_ stale (it still says "386bsd" in it, and I remember when
I played with a few years ago, it used the wrong magic number for the kernel).
Does anyone use it?

>I have often wanted a PC BIOS that communicated with the serial port,
>and allowed CMOS configuration, etc.  Haven't seen one yet.

The only one I've ever seen that could do that was the Netblazer, but
they obviously did their own BIOS (and I doubt it would work in a normal
PC).

--Ken