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Date:      Tue, 3 Sep 2002 23:52:32 +0200
From:      Bernd Walter <ticso@cicely5.cicely.de>
To:        Thomas Pornin <pornin@bolet.org>
Cc:        alpha@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: AXPpci33 <-> Sparc sun4c  serial cable
Message-ID:  <20020903215232.GC82356@cicely5.cicely.de>
In-Reply-To: <20020903190239.A48033@gnah.bolet.org>
References:  <20020903190239.A48033@gnah.bolet.org>

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On Tue, Sep 03, 2002 at 07:02:40PM +0200, Thomas Pornin wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have at home an AXPpci33 machine running happily FreeBSD-4.6. This is
> a standard NoName board, with some PCI slots, onboard SCSI, a 166 MHz
> cpu (21066 I believe) and 32 MBytes of ram. The board features a serial
> port, which seems to be recognized by FreeBSD:
> 
> sio0: configured irq 4 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
> sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 on isa0
> sio0: type 16550A
> sio0: interrupting at ISA irq 4
> sio1: reserved for low-level i/o

If sio0 is your console and you want to use sio1 you have to remove
the debug flags on sio1.

> I shall soon acquire an old IPC Sun SparcStation. Those stations can
> use a serial console, and are actually supposed to switch to a serial
> console in the absence of any keyboard (there might be a switch on the
> board but that's not a problem). If I remember correctly, the DB25
> connector is female on those stations, and it is possible that the pin
> layout is non-standard.

Take a gender changer and you get the same pinout as on a PC DB-25.

> What I would like to do is connecting the serial ports of the Alpha
> and the Sparc machines so that I could control the Sparc console from
> a shell on the Alpha machine. I have two questions:
> 
> ** What software should I use on the Alpha box ? I know there exists
> some program called "minicom", which has a FreeBSD port, that might
> be adequate. But is this the standard solution ?

I prefer tip, but minicom will also do.

> ** What is the layout of the serial cable to use ? I suspect that there
> are non-standard serial ports on some Alpha machines for the following

For console on FreeBSD and Suns a 3 wire null-modem cable will do.
For the general use you want a fully connected null-modem which also
handles DCD and DSR which many cheap cables don't do.
I don't remember the pinout on the NoName board - I can find out
if you need to know.
But I can say for shure that pinout is different to the pinout used
in most PCs!

> reason: I once had a Multia, which is basically a NoName board in a

Multias are different in many aspects - they only share the same CPU
family and therefor the same embedded chipset which make them very
similar from the software standpoint.

> small box. That Multia could use a vt220 as console when no keyboard

The SRM console isn't requiring a special terminal type - I once
used an old ADM3A (a real Lear Siegler from 1980).

> was connected. A simple null-modem cable worked (those cables sold as
> "doom-cable", with a DB9 and a DB25 at each end). I tried the same
> setting on my current Alpha machine, and it did not work.

What do you mean with did not work?

> Some sort of reference on serial cables would be much appreciated.
> There is some info on:
> http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/Hardware/Misc/serial.html
> but it is only partial.

I usually build my cables myself just because I don't have the time to
search for the right one.

-- 
B.Walter              COSMO-Project         http://www.cosmo-project.de
ticso@cicely.de         Usergroup           info@cosmo-project.de


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