Idea for 3B1 boot ROM enhancement

[Thad P Floryan]

In a recent posting, someone (cannot find the message online) asked for ideas
of things to be added to the boot ROMs on the 3B1.  Here's one:

on boot, test to see if the keyboard is connected (easy to do by interrogating
the keyboard over its serial port via the 6850 UART (see schematics, page 14));

a) If the keyboard IS connected, then do what we all know and love as the
   standard "boot" with all dialogue written to the 3B1's monitor and any
   input accepted from the keyboard.

b) If the keyboard is NOT connected, then assume that /dev/tty000 is the
   console and process all dialogue to/from that onboard serial port

This idea came up during a 'phone conversation this evening with Brantly Coyle
as we were discussing various software and hardware projects.

The need for this should be obvious for when the monitor decides to go belly up
or one's keyboard goes belly up or for those who "repackage" their motherboard
and chassis in a new case and choose to use a real terminal as the system
console.

Given the present "9600 baud" setting for /dev/window in /etc/inittab, the
serial port should be defaulted to 9600 baud if it is chosen to be the console
due to the absence of the keyboard.

Thad Floryan [ thad at cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]