I've heard of a weasel card which goes in the monitor connector and then can send output to at least a printer and maybe a serial device. Those choosing this route to not bother anyone can expect to pay $400.00 for the equipment and no I don't have any contact information for any vendor. I read about these back in the 1990's so those may have got discontinued by now. On Sun, 4 Aug 2019, Linux for blind general discussion wrote: > Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:12:22 > From: Linux for blind general discussion <blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx> > To: blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > Subject: Those Rotten VGA BIOS Setup Screens > > Are there any gadgets out there that one can connect to a > Linux box which will hook to the VGA output of a computer needing > BIOS setup work and output text so we don't have to bother other > people to help us tinker? > > Another possibility might be to use a LCD monitor which > generally has much less flicker than do the old CRT-style > monitors and then snap a picture of the screen on an iPad and use > something like Prismo which is an OCR program that, when you can > get it to work works well. > > The longest shot I am thinking of is to buy a device from > Epifan which can receive VGA video and converts it in to a .uvc > file which is the same format that web cams use. > > I will have to dive in to perl and write a program that > can at least decode the characters on that screen. One nice > thing about that is that it is guaranteed to be straight and in > focus. > > I will have to learn about the .uvc format in order to > expand one frame of video in to the bit map. > > I'm glad nobody is waiting on this project besides me. > > Even so, this is a perfect example of how technology > works against you when you want to do something that all the > suits who design this stuff didn't anticipate you needing to do. > > In this case, I've got some old Dell computers which need > to always boot from CDROM before the hard drive. > > When you set them up this way, they revert back to a > different sequence for some unknown reason after maybe 6 months > or a year. As computer users who are blind, it's much better all > around if we can solve our own problems within reason. > > Some rack-mount servers do have serial-based setup > methods but most desktops don't. > > Besides, if you have ever been in the same room as many > rack-mount servers, you'll notice it's like being on the runway > when a jet is about to take off. > > They are built to be in a rack with gobs of other hot > servers and they move a ton of air with their tiny fast-moving > fans. > > Anyway, thanks for any good ideas. > > Martin McCormick > > _______________________________________________ > Blinux-list mailing list > Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > -- _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list