Fw: RE: Tyan serial console - how?

[David Mathog]

> I've found the easiest way to get into the bios is to disable quickboot
> mode (yes it will count every meg of ram) and use ANSI terminal
> emulation. If you hit F2 it will drop to bios after the ram count. 
> 
> At 9600bps the quickboot was too quick to jump into the bios most of the
> time and I'd have to reboot from grub :)

"Disable quickboot" is some ancient curse, right?

I just tried it and found that the serial line
couldn't cut in during the long (1Gb) memory test.  Sure, I could
hit F2 in minicom but the serial console ignored it.  It only
responded to F2 once the count stopped.

Now it gets really wierd.

So I set quickboot back to enabled using the serial
console and did a "save change and exit".

It came up doing the memory test. 

Huh???

When it let me back in (again, through minicom) it showed quickboot
set to "Enabled".  But it was booting as if it was disabled.
Rebooted a few times.  Each time it goes through the long boot. 
Unhooked the serial line and stuck a monitor and keyboard back on. 
Changed the setting to disabled, saved, enabled, save and exit.
 
Nope.

Set memory back from ECC Scrub to disabled.

Nope.

Plugged in a mouse.

Yes - quickboot finally took effect.

Either there was a delayed effect (by 1 boot)
from disabling ECC or a mouse must be plugged in to 
make BIOS changes really stick = match what the BIOS shows.

Turned ECC Scrub back on saved it.  Unplugged the mouse.
Cycled power.  It still does quickboot.  It must also be doing
ECC Scrub because it takes a long time to start (that's
normal.)

This is the strangest BIOS behavior I've ever seen. How can
the BIOS possibly display one value and then act as if it was
set to the opposite value?

Quality thy name is not Tyan!


David Mathog
mathog at caltech.edu
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech