[rescue] My new UltraSparc 5's, also my first Sun stations

[Jochen Kunz]

On Thu, Jun 02, 2005 at 06:46:06AM -0500, Paul Mantz wrote:

> I see pci slots lurking back here, is it possible for me to get a
> couple USB PCI cards and throw them in there? 
Yes. I used a USB 1.1 PCI card in my U5 / U10. Meanwhile I replaced it with
a USB 2.0 PCI card.

> That would let me use modern peripherals [...] as well as a KVM for
> switching.
This may work. Note that you will not be able to use the USB keyboard
for the PROM console. I don't know about Linux. NetBSD sould have no
problem using USB keyboards and mice for OS console and X11. NetBSD uses
an abstraction layer for wscons(4), wskbd(4) and wsmouse(4). So a user
land programm like getty(8) or the X-Server doesn't need to care about
he actual hardware. It sees just wskbd(4) and wsmouse(4), regardless if
this is provided by a Sun type 4 or a USB keyboard. In addition NetBSD
has wsmux(4). So you can connect multiple keyboards and mice to your
machine and use them simultaneous.

> As far as using BSD, I'd rather prefer to use linux as I don't have
> a machine running it yet.
This is a perfect reason to get your first NetBSD box. :-)
-- 



tsch|_,
         Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/