[ On Saturday, December 4, 1999 at 16:07:32 (+0100), Manuel Bouyer wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Booting without video card....
>
> > - Is a keyboard necessary to boot ? I think I can disable the "stop on
> > errors" in the BIOS.
> 
> No, I do have machines which boot without keyboard.

Indeed, and with my patches that incorporate the FreeBSD keyboard probe
routine into the boot blocks, the system will even automatically switch
to a serial console when necessary (i.e. when there's no keyboard
installed).  [Of course my patches keep the ability for one to hard-wire
the console to any specified serial port, or the keyboard, etc. for
special situations, such as embedded systems.]

To date I've only found one machine where the keyboard probe didn't
work, and that's a Compaq ProLiant 2500.  Even the slightly newer
FreeBSD-3.3 didn't get that one right.

The only problem I've had with this auto-detect scheme is that it
requires you to boot with the keyboard in the intended state.  However I
think it might be possible to re-direct the kernel's idea of where the
console is attached, and I may try working on that at some point.

BTW, there's nothing more useless in PC consoles than Compaq's
"integrated remote console" subsystem -- what a totally stupid (and
misleading) design!  Almost as bad is the current NetBSD/i386 scheme of
requiring a keypress on the intended console device within a specific
timeout.

Rumour has it that Intel's got something similar to the Compaq IRC
support in some of their new boards, such as the C440GX+ Server Board,
but perhaps a bit better.  It's called the "Emergency Management Port".
It doesn't look terribly useful though as it doesn't give full BIOS
access either.  Why can't these goofs just use OpenFirmware!?!?!?!?

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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