Two 386 Unix PC questions:

[~XT6510300~Frank McGee~C23~M24~6326~]

In article <2308 at cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> cgw at cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (C. Gray Watson) writes:
>Hi:
>	We are setting up a 32 machine distributed database system on AT&T
>386 Unix workstations.  They seem, so far, to be very quick robust machines.
>I will post some performance details about the machine type when we have our
>system operational and our benchmarks done.

>My questions are these:

>1)	We are stacking the machines 3 high and 10 wide.  We are trying to find
>a way to enable the computers to boot up without a keyboard; i.e.  diable the
>automatic keyboard check at boot time.  Does anyone have information of a
>successful solution (or attempts) to this problem?

The ROM BIOS listing provides details on what diagnostics checking is
done on powerup, including the keyboard.  Keep in mind that if you burn
custom ROMs, the hotline won't support your machine.  The keyboard
does have some smarts so if you were to add a plug or box, it would
have to be able to emulate whatever signals the keyboard sends back.
There was a discussion about booting machines without keyboards in
general in comp.sys.ibm.pc about 6 months ago I believe.

I don't believe you can purchase ROM BIOS source in machine readable
form.  However, you can order it as a document.

>2)	We have the tower upright version of the 386 workstation.  I have been
>told that the console-unit's display is addressable by AT&T reps.  Does anyone
>have the address and proceedures for displaying messages on the display??

There was a discussion in comp.sys.att a while back (more than 6 months
ago) about doing this.  To be able to do this, you'll need to write a
Unix driver for the console display, and then write code to send things
to the adaptor.  To do that, you'll probably need a 6386E WGS Processor
Hardware Reference Manual (you'll also need to know how to write a Unix
device driver).

The documents I'd recommend are :
6386 ROM BIOS Listing	 (PEC 1637-021)	$95
6386E Hardware Reference TBA
6386E Service Manual	 TBA

The ROM BIOS listing is available now, the ROM BIOS is identical
between the 6386 and 6386E (our listing covers the 1.13 ROMs, it may
have been updated to cover 1.14's).  The 6386E technical manuals aren't
available yet, If there's enough interest I'll post ordering info when
they become available.

Hope this is what you were looking for.
-- 
Frank McGee
Tier 3 Indirect Channel Sales Support
attmail!fmcgee