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Old 17th July 2008
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Default PC Weasel availability?

Both Lucas' Absolute FreeBSD & Absolute OpenBSD mention the PC Weasel found at:

http://www.realweasel.com/

...which is essentially a video card/keyboard emulator for i386 which outputs the signal through a serial connection. This allows anyone connected via a null modem cable to access the system's BIOS during boot.

I sent inquiries to info@ a week ago which are still unanswered. Mail sent today to sales@ bounced. The phone operator in Calgary says that the phone number found on their Webpage is no longer in service. Yeah, it looks like they are no longer in business, but I thought I'd ask the gentle readership here.

If anyone has information on this company or another reliable serial/video/keyboard emulator for i386, I like to hear about your experience.
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Old 17th July 2008
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Don't know anything about it, but there is one on Ebay....
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Old 17th July 2008
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by roddierod View Post
Don't know anything about it, but there is one on Ebay....
Thanks.

For anyone interested, Michael Lucas responded to private email stating that the company folded shortly after the release of the second edition of Complete FreeBSD.
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Old 17th July 2008
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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There is one on Ebay... only 1, so... shall we fight over it? or will you generously back down?

EDIT: Do the order forms on the site still work? have you attempted to place an order?

Last edited by BSDfan666; 17th July 2008 at 05:06 PM.
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Old 17th July 2008
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BSDfan666 View Post
...or will you generously back down?
Go for it. I needed several, but if the company has vaporized, one won't do me a lot of good. I was hoping to avoid the need of tying in a KVM setup, but now it looks like I don't have a choice.
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Do the order forms on the site still work?
I don't know. I wanted to get some technical questions answered first (ie. Can they coexist with video cards?), so I didn't get that far.
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Old 17th July 2008
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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I don't believe they can coexist, because they take over the role of video card as far as the BIOS is concerned... was only kidding btw, can't afford one via their site or Ebay, food is more important this week.

It's sad though, doesn't seem like there are any resellers or alternatives... if this company does vaporize, it'll be near impossible to buy one.

According to the site, the cards "open source".. documentation is included, along with microcontroller source, would be nice if that was at least publicly available.
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Old 17th July 2008
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BSDfan666 View Post
I don't believe they can coexist, because they take over the role of video card as far as the BIOS is concerned
I agree, but I wanted them to confirm this before I ordered. Anyway, it's a moot point now.

HP & Dell have similar products, but unfortunately, reviews don't indicate that they are as good. I also suspect they may be specific to their own hardware, but I have not confirmed this assumption. In any event, it looks like the KVM market has won. Bummer.
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Old 18th July 2008
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One German seller at ebay has a few "PC Weasel PCI VGA" for 99€ / ~ $156
Where are you from? You can ask him if he ships outside of Europe.
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Old 18th July 2008
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Quote:
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One German seller at ebay has a few...
Thank you for the information.
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Old 18th July 2008
J65nko J65nko is offline
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I visited a computer show a few years ago where I saw a similar product. The documentation however is somewhere in one of the 50 boxes I still did not manage to unpack
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Old 19th July 2008
Darwimy Darwimy is offline
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I believe eRIC G4 cards from raritan.info do a similar job. I don't know the exact price but some datacenters sell them with their hosted root servers for 150 EUR.
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