| From: Dave Jones <davej@xxxxxxxxxx> | The USB layer initialises really late in the bootstrap, even if | it's all compiled in rather than modular. With more and more laptops | lacking serial ports, it's a shame, as it'd help diagnose a number of | problems. My notebook has no serial adapter but it does have a parallel port. According to kernel-2.6.16/linux-2.6.16.x86_64/Documentation/serial-console.txt I can use lp0 (first parallel port) as the serial console According to this old message: http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0107.3/1142.html the parallel console is output-only (and this was in 2.4). Too bad: you may need to enter some commands to do debugging. Still, it might be useful. Would it make sense to leave the conventional keyboard enabled for console entry when the serial console is output only? Alternatively, a bidirectional protocol could be supported for the parallel port.
