> 
> On Fri, 1 Mar 1996, Bill Studenmund wrote:
> 
> > Huh? What kind of computer do you have? A PB 170? From NetBSD's point
> > of view, they both work the same. If one works, the other should.
> 
> >From NetBSD's point of view, sure, but we're talking about the booter 
> here.  Something is wrong with the way the booter and the kernel talk to 
> each other, or perhaps the settings that the kernel is initializing the 
> port to.  This is a IIx, as well, so it's not anything special.

The booter talks to the kernel by initializing two environment
variables, which get stuffed into mac68k_machine.serial_console
and mac68k_machine.serial_boot_echo. If mac68k_machine.serial_console
== 1, you have serial console on the modem, ==3 console's on the
printer, and ==0 is no serial console. If you have no serial console,
and serial_boot_echo != 0, then you get serial echo on the printer
port. The relevant code is arround line 1997 in dev/ser.c.

I assume you are using a patched 1.1 kernel, such as:
ftp://puma..../pub/outgoing/briggs/netbsd1.1-patched (I think that's the
name). If you're using a stock 1.1, I'm actually supprised you have it
working at all. Serial console didn't work in the 1.1 distribution.

So if you are using a fixed kernel, what is it doing when it boots?

> > The only possible hang-ups would be either if you had different
> > settings in /etc/ttys for instance, turning getty on on one and not
> > the other, or turning getty on on the console and on the tty you put
> > the console on.
> 
> This is not an issue with a serial console.

Maybe, maybe not. It's not an issue with single-user mode, but it is
an issue for multi-user mode. Operations on /dev/console get
re-mapped to the real device that is playing console. For us, serial
console operations get bounced to tty00 or tty01. So trying to run
getty on both /dev/console and the real tty console's mapped to
will lead to confusion. If the modem and printer settings differed (in
/etc/tty), switching "console" from one to the other would change which
settings were colliding with the console.

Take care,

Bill