Dieter wrote: > We need a name for this expansion card with the BIOS socket > and Ethernet port and whatnot. How does "EtherVGA card" sound? > Or perhaps "VGAtoX11 card"? or...? > >> You can obtain a unique IP for the PC side using DHCP. > > That can be an option for those who like it, but there needs to be > another way for those who don't want to use DHCP. I've seen > DHCP-only products get bitter complaints, so we don't want to > duplicate that mistake.
Making DHCP clients is not a problem and (from server logs) you know what is their address and you can specify that (using server configuration). The one problem might be running multiple servers on one segment - we have to avoid that - so just clients. The placement of server into the network is the responsibility of the end user. >> You can discover the display devices IP either by scanning the network, >> or sending a broadcast "magic" packet (our own discovery protocol, or >> maybe a standard way - uPnP protocol should be for this kind of stuff). > > I suppose that could be made to work. > > man dhcp-options says: > > option x-display-manager ip-address [, ip-address ...]; > This option specifies a list of systems that are running the X > Window System Display Manager and are available to the client. > Addresses should be listed in order of preference. > > This might be sufficient for the DHCP crowd. Not exactly. You can do this on a PC based DHCP server, not on the usual NAT routers where the only thing you can specify for DHCP is the DNS servers address. There is no way anybody could set this option on these most widely used DHCP servers. >>>> I suppose that the box should have an IP address so that a small local >>>> network was possible even in case #1. However, I really think that a >>>> network port dedicated to only the console display is the best idea for >>>> case #1. >>> That's up to the end user. They might already have a single cat6 in the >>> walls and not want to run more cable. >> Then put a switch to our card, so that it can act as a pass-thru for >> ethernet, unless we make a NIC replacement too (that the NIC on the card >> can be shared between VGA and standard networking for Internet access). > > A switch? I'm sorry, I don't follow you. > > I'm assuming that the Ethernet port on the card can be shared between > Ethervideo box specific traffic, and general network traffic. If > the user wants to do that. Or the user might want to have a wire > dedicated for computer-to-Ethervideobox traffic. (switch = Ethernet switch, not a mechanical one) If you want to use the old NIC from some reason (network boot) and you are limited to one wire, you need to plug the old NIC and the VGA emulator card into a switch and then go by the one wire. I mean with that the fact, that we should not limit the use of some devices only after the system boots up and loads the drivers. >> BTW: is it possible for the X box to open a new window when some PC >> boots up and display its console? > > If we have the firmware on the card send the Ethervideo box > whatever X request it is that the xterm program sends an X server > to create a new window, it should be possible for an xterm window to > be the console for a computer. I do not want xterm, rather a video window. So we just implement the x client library to the BIOS. Good. > Question for the BIOS experts. What do we do about the keyboard > and mouse? If we are doing this network console thing we need > for the BIOS and OS to accept X11 keyboard input as if it were > typed in on the local PS2 keyboard. And it should work for *all* > input. Keyboard emulation is easy (I think just two i/o ports), but I am not sure what the BIOS and the motherboard would say to have two of these things connected simultaneously. This stuff was not designed for multiple uses, so as far as it is PS/2 you will rather need an external cable from the emulation card to the already existing PS/2 ports on the back of the PC. If we target only newer BIOS-es, they can use USB HID devices for the console.. but only on the USB host on the motherboard. Maybe emulating an USB keyboard/mouse would be another option, but still needs to be plugged externally. > My one pee-cee-ish machine allows using a RS-232 port for the console. > (Good thing since the brain dead video chip doesn't speak sync-on-green.) > But the BIOS is buggy, and to enter the BIOS's setup mode, > I must type <DELETE> on the PS2 keyboard, it will not respond > to the RS-232 keyboard. Once in setup mode the RS-232 keyboard > works. > > So my question is, can the BIOS firmware on our VGA-to-Ethernet-X11 > card completely take over the keyboard and mouse inputs? > > For that matter, could it completely take over all BIOS functions, > allowing the use of an open BIOS without having to flash the > mainboard and risking creating a doorstop? Well, the Graphic card's BIOS is run BEFORE the POST, so fairly soon, but the main bios already took care of cpu and memory initialization.. so you can effectively replace about 90% of the BIOS (which includes setup, disk detection, usb initialization, os boot). Daniel _______________________________________________ Open-hardware-ethervideo mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-hardware-ethervideo
