Is anyone else on the list trying to use a DECstation as a server,
without a framebuffer?  It seems as though the mouse/keyboard serial
ports are now hardcoded as such, even though they could be used as
additional serial ports on a DECserver.

Here's my situation:  I'm using the mouse port on a DS5000/200 to
read/write to an instrument.  This has been working for years with
OpenBSD/pmax 2.5, but, prompted by Y2K, I upgraded to NetBSD/pmax
1.4.1.  I found that I could output characters on the port, but input
characters were not received.

Suspecting that this was something to do with the framebuffer support in
the kernel, I tried building a kernel without:

pseudo-device rasterconsole    1      # NB: raster console requires "fb"

pseudo-device fb               1      # up to 3 framebuffers

but this resulted in many link errors, such as:

../../../../arch/pmax/dev/mfb.c(.text+0x220): undefined reference to
`tb_kbdmouseconfig'
../../../../arch/pmax/dev/mfb.c(.text+0x220): relocation truncated to
fit: R_MIPS_26 tb_kbdmouseconfig
../../../../arch/pmax/dev/mfb.c(.text+0x248): undefined reference to
`fbconnect'../../../../arch/pmax/dev/mfb.c(.text+0x248): relocation
truncated to fit: R_MIPS_26 fbconnect

It seems as though these devices are no longer optional - was this a
conscious decision?

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

--

Philip J. Tait.....Honeywell, Phoenix, Az.....pjt@phxase.allied.com