Here's a device which just might make it possible to install Linux over a serial port using even a plain old Braille 'N Speak for speech. The following is from: http://www.realweasel.com/intro.html Regardless of which open-source operating system you prefer, we all agree on one thing: There's no better server price/performance than a consumer-grade Pentium-based* PC motherboard running Unix. [what_sucks.gif] Until now, there's been a missing link. Unlike a "real" server, a PC with a conventional BIOS can't be fully administered from a serial (RS-232) console port. Sure, once the OS is up and running it'll support a serial console, but if you want to take the system down to the BIOS (to select a different boot device, for example), you have to drag out the video monitor and keyboard. In remote applications, that just isn't an option. Of course, this wouldn't happen in a smarter world. In our dreams, all BIOSen have serial drivers and automatically kick them in upon detecting the absence of a video board. Then we wake up, and they don't. Sigh. [fixed_it.gif] The PC Weasel 2000 provides the answer. It's an 8-bit ISA board that emulates the original IBM MDA (Monochrome Display Adapter) character-based video board and the PC keyboard. Plugged into an 8-bit or 16-bit ISA slot, it takes the characters written by your CPU into its "video" memory and pumps them out its onboard RS-232 port. Characters input by you into the RS-232 port are converted into keyboard scan codes and presented to the motherboard's keyboard connector. Whether you're using a dumb terminal next to your computer, dialing in via a modem connected to the PC Weasel's serial port, or on the other side of the world, connecting through an async server, your machine will think it has a local keyboard and monitor. [royal-weasel.jpg] The PC Weasel 2000 also contains a 16550 UART (configurable to the ISA address and interrupt of your choice), which provides your OS with its normal serial console port after boot. The PC Weasel's onboard CPU detects the initialization of this port at bootup and automatically switches the serial connector over to it, taking the MDA emulation offline. The PC Weasel's CPU then continues to eavesdrop on the console port, and can be brought online again with a user-programmable escape sequence. [swell.gif] The PC Weasel distinguishes itself even further by being an open-source product. Every purchaser receives a source license for the Weasel's onboard microcontroller code. If you don't like some aspect of the board's behaviour as shipped by us, you're free to modify it using a gcc-based toolchain. The code store is flash memory that can be written without special equipment, and there's a second serial port provided for debugging. The PC Weasel 2000. Sure, it's weird. But we wouldn't have built it if we didn't need it ourselves. ___________________________________ Janina Sajka, Director Information Systems Research & Development American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) janina at afb.net --- Send your message for blinux-list to blinux-list at redhat.com Blinux software archive at ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux Blinux web page at http://leb.net/blinux To unsubscribe send mail to blinux-list-request at redhat.com with subject line: unsubscribe
