Power Macintosh: Setting up for Use Without a Monitor
Mac video isn't just SVGA with a different plug. Apple DB15 video port uses pins 4, 7 and 10 as Sense Lines. At boot, Mac looks at these sense lines to see what kind of video/monitor is attached. Think of it as a very ancient predecessor to plug and pray. Inherited way, way back from the m68020 mac][. Basically, you need to create a "loopback" plug for the Apple 15pin video port. It will fool the mac into thinking you have a monitor of (yourChoice) size attached and continue happily about its boot. All Macs will happily boot without a keyboard, or any desktop-bus devices attached. This is the official Apple "blessed" method. Go to http://til.info.apple.com request document # 21236 Power Macintosh: Setting up for Use Without a Monitor A DebianOnly machine should be able to discard this appendix and boot without need of a mac-specific hardware kludge. I hadn't said anything before because everyone is doing so well with the "cleanroom implementation" approach. But for those who have MacOS installed, and those about to be discouraged, it is the only "Apple" way to go "headless." (think headless Appleshare IP servers)
