Re: Trying to boot a supermicro H8DMT board

On 14-1-2022 12:26, Gary Palmer wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 12:06:25PM +0100, Willem Jan Withagen wrote:
>> On 14-1-2022 11:44, Gary Palmer wrote:
>>> On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 11:27:06AM +0100, Willem Jan Withagen wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I was given these SMC h8DMT boards to experiment with.
>>>> (For liquid cooling)
>>>>
>>>> Theze are server board that normally go into twin board systems.
>>>> 2 Opteron 2380 per board.
>>>>
>>>> It sort of boots, and gets to:
>>>> ?????? Beasty loader
>>>> ?????? then booting the kernel after the spinner
>>>> ???? prints the first few lines of boot output, like what compilers is used
>>>> ???? and then output stops.
>>>>
>>>> I guess that it thinks it needs to write the rest to either serial console
>>>> or something else.
>>>>
>>>> Does this sound familiar to anybody?
>>>> What do I need to toggle to keep writing where it started?
>>> What version of FreeBSD are you using?
>> I tried both 12.2 and 13.0 (both RELEASE)
>> with similar effects.
>>> You can try going to the command prompt from the Beastie menu and
>>> putting in
>>>
>>> console="comconsole"
>>> comconsole_speed="115200"
>>>
>>> (replace the speed on 2nd line as appropriate to match the speed the board
>>>    used prior to the kernel loading)
>> 'mmm I would expect output then to go into the serial port, which is not
>> connected.
>> (I'd have to see if there is flatcable thingy somewhere here.)
>> But I'll give it a try anyways.
>>
>>> and seeing if that helps.
>> Note that the board has a VGA output that I'm using.
>> It also has an IPMI board, but that does not connect to the network whatever
>> I try.
>> So I've taken that out, but still the output went into thin air.
> Apologies, I thought you were using comconsole.
Just as info:
As soon is I type 'set console="comconsole"' my input has gone...
Not possible to set the linespeed after that, only it still accepts keyboard
but does not echo to VGA.
So I guess the order has to be the other way around:  set speed and then
swithc console.
> console="vidconsole"
This is the default if I show the loader options.
> or
>
> console="efi"

> if the board has EFI, may work better.  Not sure if H8DMT has EFI or not
It is a 2004 bios, I guess not EFI.
Did not find it in any of the bios settings.

I have the feeling that one way or another the kernel thinks that:
   it should no longer write to the VGA videobuffer
Or that some settings disable the video output.
--WjW