[Soekris] 4801 stalls in openbsd bootstrap

[Ted Phelps]

farlies writes:
> I'm having some difficulties communicating with the openbsd 3.9
> boot(8) program over the serial console via a null modem cable
> connected to a Linux laptop running Minicom 2.1.
> The  box is a June-2006 vintage 4801 with comBIOS ver. 1.28.
> OpenBSD 3.9 was installed on an attached hard drive
> and will happily boot automatically *IF* no attempt is
> made to interact with the bsd "boot>" prompt.  Typing a
> single character here will hang it every time:
>
>   > boot
>   Using drive 0, partition 0.
>   Loading...
>   probing: pc0 com0 com1 pci mem[639K 255M a20=on]
>   disk: hd0+ hd1+
>   >> OpenBSD/i386 BOOT 2.10
>   -
>   com0: 9600 baud
>   switching console to com0
>   >> OpenBSD/i386 BOOT 2.10
>   boot> h
> 
> The "h" here is as far as I got in my plea for "help".
> It does not matter what is typed here--game over.
> 
> My /etc/boot.conf has set baud 9600, though I have tried it at
> 19200 as well with identical results.  Terminal emulation
> apparently works fine in comBios and bsd login shell.
> 
> Theories?

Make sure that flow control is disabled.  Minicom could be waiting for a
resume signal that's never going to come.

Cheers,
-Ted