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Date:      Wed, 23 Apr 1997 21:25:21 +0200
From:      j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
To:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: BIOS setup via serial port?
Message-ID:  <19970423212521.KR50958@uriah.heep.sax.de>
In-Reply-To: <199704231845.LAA00493@precipice.shockwave.com>; from Paul Traina on Apr 23, 1997 11:45:01 -0700
References:  <199704231845.LAA00493@precipice.shockwave.com>

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As Paul Traina wrote:

> I'd like to build some headless machines, but one of the things that
> really bugs me is that I can't see the BIOS boot messages or enter
> setup without having a keyboard and video card attached.
> 
> Does anyone have any pointers or ideas on how to handle this (changing out
> the flash bios on the motherboard is certainly an option)...?

Write an INT 0x10 fake engine that forwards the requests over a serial
line.  It probably needs to keep track of the ``screen image'' in some
buffer.  This might turn out to become a mini-curses...

...and then, hope the best the setup utility is actually using the
BIOS functions, as opposed to write directly to the screen buffer.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)



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