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CONS(4)								       CONS(4)

NAME
       cons - keyboard and console display interface

DESCRIPTION
       The  keyboard and various possible displays combine to provide a termi‐
       nal-like interface  to  the  system.  Internally,  these	 are  separate
       devices	which  software combines to emulate a normal terminal. See the
       appropriate manual pages for information about  each  display  and  the
       keyboard.

       The keyboard adapter also supports the speaker, which is activated when
       the ASCII character bel (^G) is sent to the display with software.  For
       additional information on speaker control, see speaker(4).

       Console Device Control

       The   display   devices,	  /dev/ttyaed,	 /dev/ttyap16,	 /dev/ttyap8c,
       /dev/ttyapa8, /dev/ttyega, /dev/ttymono, /dev/ttympel, /dev/ttyvga, and
       /dev/tty8514  are  all  minor  devices  under /dev/console, and are all
       capable of displaying console output.  Unique to	 this  system  is  the
       fact  that  you may have one or more of these displays on your worksta‐
       tion at a time and any one can act as a console.	 With  only  one  key‐
       board  and  system  mouse,  the	console driver multiplexes these input
       devices to the many displays.  All of the displays may have  simultane‐
       ous  logins  and	 the  user  can	 ``hot key'' between each display.  At
       first, this ``input focus''  is	on  the	 first	device	in  the	 above
       sequence	 to  be	 found at initialization time.	The input focus can be
       manually switched to the next available display by pressing the default
       ``hot  key'' <Alt><Scroll Lock>.	 When the input focus is on a display,
       all keyboard and mouse data are sent to the process(es) that read  from
       that display.

       If no other console tty device is open, and only the default input emu‐
       lator is used (see kbdemul(4)), the input focus is set to /dev/console.
       In  this case, <Alt><Scroll Lock> only switches which display gets con‐
       sole output.  In the case where one or more tty devices	are  open,  or
       the  default  input  emulator  changes, /dev/console gets no input.  It
       tries to send output to the currently focused device.  A user can redi‐
       rect these console messages to any tty devices with the TIOCCONS ioctl.

       To support the many displays and the multiplexing between them, an emu‐
       lator package was developed to work  with  the  console	driver.	  This
       package	allows	different types of emulation on input and output to be
       written independently of device.

       The  display  devices  /dev/aed,	 /dev/apa16,  /dev/apa8c,   /dev/apa8,
       /dev/ega,  /dev/mono,  /dev/mpel,  /dev/vga,  and /dev/ibm8514 are also
       minor devices to /dev/console.  They are typically used by window  man‐
       agers and other graphic applications.  When the focus is pointed to one
       of these display devices, the console messages are put  in  a  circular
       buffer (see bufemul(4)) unless redirected with the TIOCCONS ioctl.  The
       buffer is flushed to the screen upon closing the display device.

       The following are generic console ioctls defined in screen_cousf.u:

       CON_SELECT_SCREEN   Output focus is set to display number (arg > 0)  or
			   to  next  display in list (arg < 0).	 Previous dis‐
			   play number is returned.

       CON_GET_SCREEN	   Just returns the current output focus display  num‐
			   ber.

       EIGETD		   Gets	 the  number of the current input emulator for
			   this display.

       EOGETD		   Gets the number of the current output emulator  for
			   this display.

       EISETD		   Sets	 the  input  emulator and returns the previous
			   for this display.

       EOSETD		   Sets the output emulator and returns	 the  previous
			   for this display.

       CON_INIT_SCREEN	   Initializes the specified display (arg >=0) or this
			   display (arg < 0).

       CON_GET_FOCUS_CODE  Gets the current keyboard code for setting the con‐
			   sole focus (affects xemul only).

       CON_SET_FOCUS_CODE  Sets the current keyboard code for setting the con‐
			   sole focus (affects xemul  only),  and  return  the
			   previous code.

       All of the above commands take integer arguments.

       The following are generic console ioctls defined in consio.h:

       SCRIOCGETF	   Gets the screen control flags for the given display
			   number.

       SCRIOCSETC	   Sets the screen control flags for the given display
			   number.

		 SCRIOCGETF and SCRIOCSETC use the following structure:
		 struct screen_control {
				 int   device; /* which screen/display to control */
				 int   switches; /* Flags for this screen */
		 };

	     CONSDEV_PRESENT	 Display  is present on this system.  This bit
				 cannot be changed by SCRIOSETC.

	     CONSDEV_KERNEL	 Display is available to the kernel.

	     CONSDEV_USER	 Display is available to the user.

	     CONSDEV_INIT	 Display has been initialized for output.

	     CONSDEV_TTY	 Diplay has been initialuzed for output.  This
				 bit cannot be changed by SCRIOSETC.

	     CONSDEV_GRA	 Graphics  display has been opened directly by
				 minor device  number.	 This  bit  cannot  be
				 changed by SCRIOSETC.

	     CONSDEV_NOINPUT	 Prevents  the	"round-robin"  console	focus-
				 switching from finding	 this  display.	  This
				 flag is cleared when buf_emul is closed.

	     SCRSETNIP		 Sets  the  no-input bit in the screen control
				 flags for the display's current file descrip‐
				 tion.

	     SCRCLRNIP		 Clears the no-input bit in the screen control
				 flags for the display's current file descrip‐
				 tion.

       The following ioctl is defined in bufemul.h:

       BUFDISPINFO	   Arg	returns	 the  following	 information about the
			   display:

	     BUF_IS_ATR(arg)	 True when the CPU is  an  IBM	6152  Academic
				 System.

	     BUF_IS_RTPC(arg)	 True when the CPU is an IBM RT PC.

	     BUF_GET_PCCODE(x)	 Get   PC-Code	version/type  byte  (IBM  6152
				 only).

	     BUF_GET_VGA(arg)	 Get the type of display connected to the VGA.
				 0=none,  1=color, 2=gray.  Valid only for the
				 IBM 6152 Academic System.

	     BUF_GET_8514(arg)	 Get the type of display connected to the  IBM
				 8514/A.  0=none, 1=color, 2=gray.  Valid only
				 for the IBM 6152 Academic System.

	     BUF_GET_EGA(arg)	 Returns the value of the switches on the  EGA
				 display.   Valid  only for the IBM RT PC with
				 an EGA card installed.

       All of the above ioctl system calls are device-independent controls for
       dealing with the emulators.

       Each emulator has its own set of ioctls for its own emulation purposes.
       These other iotls are used in window-manager emulators  for  operations
       such  as passing/positioning the mouse locator for/on the display.  See
       the man page for any particular emulator for more information.

NOTE
       On the IBM RT PC, the kernel flashes ``98'' on the LEDs	if  it	cannot
       find any configured display during initialization, and then proceeds.

DIAGNOSTICS
       None.

FILES
       For the IBM RT PC:
       /dev/console
       /dev/aed
       /dev/apa16
       /dev/apa8c
       /dev/apa8
       /dev/ega
       /dev/mono
       /dev/mpel

       For the IBM 6152 Academic System:
       /dev/vga
       /dev/ibm8514

SEE ALSO
       bufemul(4),  bus(4),  ibm5081(4),  ibm5151(4),  ibm6153(4), ibm6154(4),
       ibm6155(4), ibm8514(4), ibmaed(4), ibmemul(4), kbdemul(4),  speaker(4),
       stdemul(4), tty(4), vga(4), xemul(4), setscreen(8)
       ``IBM/4.3 Console Emulators'', in Volume II, Supplementary Documents

Space overwritten by .AC macro	   Sept 1988			       CONS(4)
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