[Aurora-sparc-user] SS 20 keyboard not responding during install

[Anze Slosar]

Hi everybody,

I am quite good with linux, but never worked with sparc. I own an old
sparcstation 20
and I want to use it as server/torrent box. It has 96mb of ram, which
should be enough. Managed to install an ancient solaris, but it is too
old to do anything useful, so I wanted to try aurora. I burned aurora
2.0 and stopped the booting process by pressing stop+a, typed "boot
cdrom"  and machine booted into linux and begun an installation
process. I get stuck with first menu "verify cd, yes or no", basically
my keyboard does nothing. can't move up, can't move down, pressing
num-lock or caps-lock doesn't light anything up. I saw that the mice
attached to the keyboard did get recognised during kernel boot
messages.
The keyboard is in general a bit dodgy during boot sequence (before
linux appears) as it says every now and then that no keyboard is
attached and will use serial during boot (and screen goes black). If
keyboard is recognised it nevertheless always says "no country code
for FF, will use USA" or something like that (again, this comes as the
very first message, from whatever BIOS equivalent there is).

Am I right to guess that the problem is keyboard (on PC num-lock
always goes on/off if kernel is ok)? Any ideas?  (tried PC keyboard it
was nothing. tried plugging/unplugging which beeps but nothing
happens; don't see how could I ever et a different sun keyboard).

Best wishes,

anze


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