On 17.05.00, 12:40:10, Johnny C. Lam wrote:
> I'm having trouble with the install floppy on an Acer TravelMate 342T,
> Intel Pentium III 500MHz with lots of Acer hardware.  I could get the
> INSTALL kernel to boot by using wscons instead of pccons.
> 
> Anyway, the question is: is there an overriding reason why the INSTALL
> floppy uses pccons?  The GENERIC kernel defaults to wscons, so why
> doesn't the INSTALL kernel?

The reason probably was that pccons is smaller, since it does not
support multiple virtual consoles and, since it is i386-specific, also
saves the hardware abstraction layer that wscons needs.

But since the standard installation set does not longer fit on a
single 1.44-floppy, even with pccons, the need to make the kernel
smaller is not that pressing any more.

But as to which console is chosen: I know at least one system (an
oldish AMD Am5x86) that does not work with wscons at all, but only
with pccons or pcvt.

> 
>      -- Johnny C. Lam <lamj@stat.cmu.edu>
>         Department of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University
>         http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~lamj/

-- 
Bernd Sieker

NetBSD - where do you want to go Tuesday?
		-- Julian Assange