[rescue] TYPE 6 SUCKS

[James Lockwood]

On Fri, 5 Oct 2001, Bill Bradford wrote:

> The mouse I can live with.. but god... I *hate* the feel of the T6.
> I much prefer the old-style granite SGI 101key PS2 keyboard I have at
> work; but even my PS2-to-Sun interface box wont work with this machine
> since its USB. 8-(

You _can_ use older Sun keyboards and mice on the Blades, if you're so
inclined.

Caveats:

You can't use them during the bootup process, only once X is running (see
below).
You will give up 2 serial ports.
You need to build a cable.

You _may_ be able to use only a (Sun) serial keyboard or serial mouse in
conjunction with a USB input device and only consume a single serial port.
This would allow the use of a USB keyboard (for booting) and a type-4/5/6
serial mouse (for X), solving Bill's problem.  My personal favorite is a
type-5 optical modified to 4800bps (1200 is normal).

See:

ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/local/inf4/eckert/doubleX/

This is intended to allow a second "station" on a single Sun box by adding
a Sun kb/mouse (which are async serial) to 2 unused serial ports.  What it
really is is a pair of openwin device drivers to allow an X server to hook
into a Sun kb/mouse on a normal serial port.  There is no reason you can't
use this to drive your "primary" mouse.

I've used this package before to add a second station to my AXi, works
flawlessly (with the exception of certain apps not respecting AUDIODEV,
but I digress).

-James