Subject: video emulator -> serial port devices
To: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
From: Malcolm Herbert <mjch@mjch.net>
List: port-i386
Date: 02/03/2006 14:57:23
On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 09:49:18PM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
|>On 2-Feb-06, at 10:14 PM, Jason Mitchell wrote:
|>> Anyway, I'm wondering if it would it make sense to add an option to
|>> the i386 boot block that would tell it not to try to talk to a VGA
|>> card. This issue also might apply to other headless machines that do
|>> VGA emulation and output the text to a serial port, like the boards
|>> from Soekris Engineering (http://www.soekris.com). Does anyone know
|>> if they get double characters output to the serial port?
|>
|>FWIW, I had no such problems on my Soekris net4801.
|
|Neither did I, but I didn't think the Soekris used VGA emulation. I
|just have a serial boot block installed.

ah damn ... I think I misunderstood what you were talking about.

I've had a problem where I've got a PC I'm wanting to make headless.
I have the serial console working fine, but as is usual with PC
motherboards, that doesn't work when trying to alter the BIOS settings.

... scrounging around for a real monitor and keyboard is quite a pain
when it has to be done in a hurry ... it's OK at the moment since the
machine is on-site, but it won't be forever, which is where my problem
lies ...

I've long lusted after a Real Weasel card, which is a ISA or PCI card
that does VGA emulation and keyboard loopback and dumps the result
through the on-card serial port. Once the OS is booted, the first
access to the serial device turns off the VGA->serial conversion and
turns it into a simple serial port. You can talk to the Real Weasel
independantly of the PC it's connected to and get it to return POST
codes or do hardware resets and the like - it also has a watchdog
function apparently, which could be useful for cases where a machine
hangs ...

More details are at http://www.realweasel.com/ but I've been unable to
contact them for a month or so to arrange a purchase and I'm getting
close to the deadline for shipping this box out of here ...

Are there any other cards out there that do a similar thing? Has anyone
got one of these cards in particular and where did you get it?

Regards,
Malcolm

--
Malcolm Herbert                                This brain intentionally
mjch@mjch.net                                                left blank