Re: weasel Pc

[Mario Lang <mlang@teleweb.at>]

Cheryl Homiak <chomiak@chartermi.net> writes:

> wondered if anybody had any experience with or knowledge of this product.

Yeah, I use it at work. See below.

> I thought I read a while back that a blind person had put this in his
> computer and was able to use it for reading what comes up in the
> bios before boot and, if I understood correctly, he could then also
> make changes with sighted help.

NO! Without sighted help! Thats the key. Only thing you need is a second
PC, or a VT100 terminal capable notetaker or such. At work I simply
use my main workstation. I have ttyS1 connected to the realweasel and
use Minicom as terminal emulator. It works perfectly, as long
as the BIOS isnt of the very new kind with graphics display. But
bios wasnt the main motivation for me. Linux installation is very simple
with this card. In  fact, as I said, I use it at work for installing
Linux PCs. Get a new PC, open it, put the realweasel in, boot up,
install debian, make sure IP adress and SSH works, power down, remove the
weasel, close PC again, and fire it up... Then I do everything over the net.

> but I'm not sure about this. there's apparently both an ISA and a
> PCI version.

?? Really. You seen a PCI version there! I have to buy it, now!

> Not saying I'd rush out and buy one or that i necessarily want to
> give up one of my slots to this (except temporarily when need
> arises), but it is frustrating not to be able to check bios settings
> without sighted help. Any input on this, especially if anybody has
> had firsthand experience, would be appreciated.  TIA.
I can only say, it eased my work very much. And the product is real fun,
can go up to 240000bps if I remember right. Has a little internal menu for remote
control. Say, you could reboot the PC via a escape sequence if you had
one little cable connected. That basicly would allow you to connect the realweeasel
to a modem and therefore a phone and remote control a server somewhere. Its
really a nice thing. When I play with it, I started to ask myself: "And why
dont do modern BIOSes just do that for you?"


-- 
CYa,
  Mario