Headless performa 6400/200

[IvanK. <chepati%yahoo.com@localhost>]

Hi all,

I'm a fresh new NetBSD/ppc user, although I have three years of linux/x86 and 
one year of linux/ppc experience, and Unix (mostly Solaris) knowledge for 
six years.

I got NetBSD-1.5 installed on Saturday, booting from floppy, with a dumb 
terminal connected to the serial port (ttya according to OF) of a 
Performa6400/200.  Load-base is set to 600000 and real-base is F00000.  
Boot-device was fd:0.

After the installation, I changed boot-device to ata/ATA-Disk@0:0 and now the 
computer boots fine and all works great, except for one "minor" problem.  It 
insists on using the serial port for console instead of using the built-in 
video card.  My monitor remains black and it doesn't even get a signal.

I can use the serial port, but I've noticed that it has the tendency to lock 
up after some time.  I can also access it via ssh, and that's the way I want 
it since the primary function of this box is to serve as a NAT server.  
However, I wish I could run it non-headless in case I decide to run X at 
some point in the future.

What do I have to do?  Do I have to fiddle with OF?  With NetBSD's conf files 
somewhere?

There was a section in one of the FAQs somewhere trying to answer this one,  
but the suggested solution was to set input-device and output-device to kbd 
and screen respectively in OF.  However, this gets me a CLAIM failed message 
as many times as I try it.  Plus, setting these two variables to anything 
other than ttya or ttyb prevents NetBSD from booting.  Besides, these I 
believe are for getting into OF.

Anyhow, I do realize this may have been asked and answered many times before, 
but I could find no way to search the port-powerppc archives.  Maybe I didn't 
look long enough:)

Happy new year to all and thanks to the NetBSD people!

Chepati.

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