Re: Sun Support for Linux
I got one of these dual athlon m/b from tyan (with 2 1.4GHz Athlons
and DDR memory -- talk about a sick fast machine) for a client (alas
not for me), and it had a feature where you can get the thing to do
the post/bios cruft onto the serial port instead of the keyboard/vga
port. It did kind of a crappy ncurses type of emulation of the
video version, which I thought was a silly waste, but hey. It was
extremely handy, and only about 5 years late in coming .... Has
anyone noticed that serial concentrators are now more expensive than
kvm switches? Sheesh.
a
Mark Eichin wrote:
>
> I've actually got a (PCI) weasel - it's more useful for (1) kernel
> development (2) non-sighted (or simply remote!) access to BIOS
> settings. It's not nearly as interesting for service oriented
> hardware, which you hardly ever reboot, and only need to see the BIOS
> when you're right there changing hardware. (and yes, the weasel cost
> slightly more than the compgeeks.com celeron box it is installed in :-)
>
> Don't forget the Intel NS1020 "hosting appliance". Serial BIOS, no
> video at all, and a little LCD front panel with a (regrettably
> intel-proprietary) UI for setting an initial IP config and root
> password. Ships running redhat (2.2.16 kernel), but except for the
> front panel, was easy enough to "upgrade" to Debian... [anyone who
> actually has one of these boxes and wants it, email me and ask for
> debian-upgrade-howto and I'll send the rough draft.]
>
> On the otherhand, I'd be a customer for a more sane serial bios (the
> intel one is still a curses-style text-menus interface) or even an
> Intel-based OpenFirmware motherboard :-)
>
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