>>> As an aside, is there any dmesg(8) sort of way of getting at the prom
>>> monitor's signon banner?
>> 
>> Not AFAIK.
> 
> 
> Bummer.  I woul dreally like to stop depending on this
> damn monitor!  Too bulky to be lugging it in and out
> of storage each time I need to talk to the rom monitor...

There's no need for that...  :)

The PROM can also speak to a serial console.  Indeed, this is how I run all
of my Suns.  (I do my X stuff on an SGI.  Previously, I had a couple Suns I
used graphical consoles on.)

On most versions of the PROM, if you simple unplug the keyboard and plug a
terminal into serial port A (9600 baud, 8N1), you'll see a message saying
"Keyboard not present.  Using ttya for input and output."  I believe this is
echoed to both the terminal and the screen, although nothing else will
appear on the screen after that, so you might as well not even connect it.
On the terminal, you will then get the same banner you're seeing on the
graphical console, just without the graphics.  Etc.

In those rare cases that unplugging the keyboard doesn't cause a machine to
fall back to serial console, you can force it to do so, by issuing these
commands to the PROM:

   setenv input-device ttya
   setenv output-device ttya

(You may find yourself blindly typing these using a Sun keyboard, with no
monitor attached, followed by a "reset" command.  I've done that a couple
times...  :)  Note that you can use ttyb, too, if you like.  Type "help
system" for more information.

Also, I don't think this was mentioned previously:  The diag output der
Mouse and I were talking about only dumps out to the serial console, as I
recall.  (Although this may be PROM-version-dependant.)  Basically, you
really ought to have a dumb terminal in your machine room.  :)

- Geoff