Thanks to all who replied and suggested that I use a serial console.
Dr. Blinn was right about waiting a bit, about 60 seconds it will drop
back to a console and "restart nogui" did the trick.
Below is Dr. Blinn's response. Thanks also goes to: Marquess, Dustin,
Pat OBrien, Michael Mackey, Martin Rxnde Anders and John Lanier.
---Andy
!
! > Greetings:
! >
! > We have a Digital Personal Workstation 500a and need to reinstall the
! > OS. However, there is something wrong with the graphics card and it
! > refuses to start X windows. Is it possible to perform a text based
! > installation of Tru64 5.1a ?
!
! I *think* that if you give it enough time it will drop back to a shell
! prompt, at which point you should be able to just type in
!
! restart nogui
!
! and get a "glass tty" install, provided you have enough graphics to do
! VGA compatibility.
!
! Otherwise, you might need to get something like a dumb terminal or a
! tip line from another system or something like kermit on a PC that will
! allow you to have a real serial console, plug into the "COM1" port on
! the back of the system, type a few carriage returns (8 bits, 9600 baud,
! no parity is the usual setting for the console port) and then issue the
! "set console serial" command in the SRM console, do an "init", and the
! system should start up in a serial mode console, at which point you can
! start the install by booting the install media and it should do things
! in serial mode.
!
! Tom
!
! Dr. Thomas P. Blinn + Tru64 UNIX Software + Hewlett-Packard Company
! Internet: tpb_at_zk3.dec.com, thomas.blinn_at_compaq.com, thomas.blinn_at_hp.com
! 110 Spit Brook Road, MS ZKO3-2/W17 Nashua, New Hampshire 03062-2698
! Alpha Tru64 UNIX kernel support Phone: (603) 884-0646
! ACM Member: tpblinn_at_acm.org PC_at_Home: tom_at_felines.mv.net
!
! Worry kills more people than work because more people worry than work.
!
! Keep your stick on the ice. -- Steve Smith ("Red Green")
!
! My favorite palindrome is: Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
! -- Phil Agre, pagre_at_alpha.oac.ucla.edu
!
! Yesterday it worked / Today it is not working / UNIX is like that
! -- apologies to Margaret Segall
!
! Opinions expressed herein are my own, and do not necessarily represent
! those of my employer or anyone else, living or dead, real or imagined.
!
!
Received on Tue Nov 04 2003 - 20:37:41 NZDT