| Folks:
| 	I'm trying to make my U5 take over more and more functions of the
| 	PC that used to fill it's role (see my attempts at getting printing
| 	to work a while back, which I've still not had a chance to look at
| 	in more depth 8-/), and the next thing I'd like is to hook up the
| 	console port of my term server to it.
|
| 	The serial ports on the U5 seem to work dandy for use as a serial
| 	console, though I'm sort-of stymied as to why sysctl thinks that
| 	`kern.consdev == (null)', which may be related to my problem.
|
| 	However, I can't make outbound serial work via tip, for example.
| 	tip simply never ever reads anything from the port(s).  I've
| 	removed the `kbd/ms at com?' from my config since the keyboard/
| 	mouse that belong to this machine aren't being used... 
|
| 	So, I've got the following questions:
|
| 		(1) Are the com-ports really shared between the "real" ports
| 		    and KB/mouse?  I know very little (so far) about the U5
| 		    hardware, but certainly recall using KB/mouse/serial all
| 		    at the same time on older (non-Ultra) sparc hardware.

No.

| 		(2) Is anyone using com@ebus succesfully, esp. on a U5?

Yes and no.

| 		(3) Is the kern.consdev being `(null)' indicative of the fact
| 		    that I'm using the PROM for console I/O?  I'm surprised 
| 		    that one of the com ports isn't tagged as console in the
| 		    autoconfig output.
|
| 	I'd have dug more into this, but was busy trying to get more of my
| 	sgi's working again (hence the need for the term server and my 
| 	desire to hang its' console off the U5).

I think you're missing a couple of rather important details about
your hardware.  Yes there are 2 16550 controllers in the machine.
But they are exclusivly used for the keyboard and mouse.  The
serial ports are driven by a Siemens sab82532 dual serial controller,
for which we currently have no drivers.  So, yes, you are using 
the firmware for I/O.

If you are interested, I think OpenBSD has a driver that you can try
to snarf.  And I started coding up a driver for the sab82532 as well
as the sab82538 8-port controller, but since I don't have any hardware 
with one, it hasn't gotten very far.


Eduardo