Subject: Re: serial consoles and BIOS console redirection
To: NetBSD/i386 Discussion List <port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Eric Schnoebelen <eric@cirr.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 09/19/2002 22:06:21
Greg A. Woods writes:
- [ On Thursday, September 19, 2002 at 15:29:56 (-0500), Eric Schnoebelen wro
- te: ]
- > Subject: Re: serial consoles and BIOS console redirection 
- >
- > 	``But FreeBSD can do it!''.
- > 
- > 	Stupid PC hardware.  If I didn't need to have an
- > intel based box around, I'd scrap them all!
- 
- Why not trade them all in on more manageable boxes, like Sun Netras
- or similar?  If you're running *BSD on them then why do they have
- to be PCs?

	Well, mostly because I still have to run some Linux/i386
applications on the boxes.  Nearly everything else doing
anything useful/important is already running on SUN or DEC hardware.

- > 	Maybe it's time for me to dig into the boot process
- > on the intel boxes.. (ugh!)
- 
- These days with most motherboards having FlashRAM for the BIOS,
- perhaps some eager PC hackers should reverse engineer some real
- console support patches for various popular BIOS models....

	I know some of the Linux folks are working on a
``LinuxBIOS'', but I have no idea if they're getting it right
either (let alone if it would boot anything besides Linux.)

--
Eric Schnoebelen		eric@cirr.com		http://www.cirr.com
  Systems programmer:  A person in sandals who has been in the elevator
    with the senior vice president and is ultimately responsible for
	    a phone call you are to receive from your boss.