> On Apr 8, 5:12, Mark Green wrote:
>
> [ re SGI/CDC Cyber 910 keyboards]
> > The cables for the keyboard are PC keyboard cables, except they
> > need males connectors on both ends.
>
> It would be more accurate to say they're LIKE PS/2 keyboard cables, except
> they need a male (6-pin miniDIN) connector both ends, AND they need all 6
> pins wired up. PS/2 only uses 4 wires (pins 2 and 6 are unused), and so PC
> 6-pin miniDIN cables are not fully wired. Mac cables probably are.
Depends upon where you get your cables. Most of the better quality cables
that I've found have all 6 pins wired, even though only 4 are needed.
It could be that they sell the cable for more than one purpose, so
they connect all the pins whether they need them or not. Its well
worth finding a good cable supplier, I've been burned more than once
by cheap cables that didn't quite do the job.
>
> > They won't boot without
> > a keyboard, stop part way through the initial hardware check in
> > the boot prom.
>
> I was going to say that Indigos boot fine without a keyboard, using the
> first serial port as console -- but in fact you have to change the PROM
> settings (setenv console d, or setenv nogfxkbd 1) to do that, for which you
> (initially) need a keyboard and monitor :-(
>
That's the problem, if they weren't initially configured to boot
off the serial port, you can't do anything with them when the
keyboard of graphics goes. We did this with all our SGI workstations,
since at some point the graphics will go, and without the serial
port console you can't run diagnostics to figure out what's wrong.
All the high end SGIs (Oynx, Origin, etc) have a special serial port
for this purpose.
--
Dr. Mark Green mark_at_cs.ualberta.ca
McCalla Professor (780) 492-4584
Department of Computing Science (780) 492-1071 (FAX)
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H1, Canada
Received on Sun Apr 08 2001 - 09:22:23 BST