STI-Console Mini-HOWTO

Hi,

After my last commits regarding keyboard-support and STI-Console I think a small MINI-HOWTO should help to avoid the most problems for people, who want to try the STI-Console on their machines.....

But first of all, I would like to thank Philipp Rumpf <[email protected]> for allowing me to commit his sticon.[c|h] drivers.

As usual, any feedback is welcome :-)

Helge

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STI-console MINI-HOWTO:
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- check out a fresh linux-2.3 and palo, delete your .config and use "make menuconfig" :-)

- SELECT ONLY ONE of

	"Support for console on serial port"
    ** OR **
	"STI-Console".

- if you get "unable to open initial console", check the MAJOR/MINOR of /dev/console in your ramdisk or NFS:
mknod /dev/console c 5 1 -- for serial console
mknod /dev/console c 4 0 -- for STI-console (should it be 4/1 ?)

For both cases I uploaded new ramdisks (ramdisk20000530-[sercon|sticon].tgz) to ftp://puffin.external.hp.com/pub/parisc/binaries/ramdisks
I added special files for lp- and parport-devices there too.

- for the STI-console you may define the initial number of rows & columns in drivers/video/dummycon.c (this is temporary). You may adjust the numbers to the kernel message "Console: switching to colour STI console <numcols>x<numrows>" you will get during the first time the kernel starts.

- once you see your STI-console is working you may reenable "unregister_console()" at the end of arch/parisc/pdc_cons.c This will disable the "double" output from the kernel.

- The only tested keyboard-support is currently with HIL-keyboards as used in 715/64's. PS/2-Keyboards *may* work (feedback welcome!).