Greg A. Woods writes:
> 
> Uhm, that device is *way* too expensive for anyone just wanting to do
> without a video card.  You could probably buy two or three dozen such
> cards at your local computer surplus/junk place for the same price!

Yup, more than I need for oe "headless" PC.  A nice old ET4000 or whatever
is all my machine really needs.

> If you really want a serial console (i.e. you're not really just trying
> to get a machine working after the video card lost all the smoke from
> its parts), then you don't really need a PC Weasel either, assuming the
> tricks that have been posted work on your motherboard.  The PC Weasle
> just makes it possible to wiggle the BIOS settings via the serial
> console, but unless you screw something up royally, that shouldn't
> normally be necessary.  Rumour has it that some of the newer Intel
> motherboards are now capable of offering this capability now too.

Actually there were older Intel boards that supposedly supported this
also. ("Express", or maybe "Extended Express" OEM)

A better fix would be to change the internal BIOS defaults to whatever
you need them to  be, then re-flash the image. (Award has "MODBIN" for
doing this)  Then a loss of NVRAM will not be such a problem.

> The real solution to getting a 100% functional serial console is to
> completely avoid the PC BIOS in the first place!  ;-)

True, though OpenBIOS has a ways to go before it will be replacing the
Award BIOS on my Soyo or Abit motherboards.  Still, I think it shouldn't
be so hard to create a combined biosboot/netboot ROM that gives a
somewhat decent serial console and the ability to boot a disk or a
network card.  Once it is fully debugged, you could even try to stuff it
into your normal BIOS. (Award has a "CBROM" utility that allegedly can
add an option ROM to a BIOS image, I have yet to get this to work)

Without the video card, there should be plenty of room for a 64K ROM
with net/biosboot functionality.  :-)

I guess the trick is forcing the 'do not stop on error' BIOS option to
always be on.

-Andrew
-- 
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Andrew Gillham                            | This space left blank
gillham@whirlpool.com                     | inadvertently.
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