You could try buying a USB-to-serial adapter or two. Simpler ones aren't that expensive. These generally have limitations for technical/electrical reasons: E.g. some serial devices may expect to be able to draw more juice than USB ports have. The gold standard would be an optically isolated adapter with transient voltage suppressors and an independent power supply – but using even a simple one just for console redirection ought to work. Ought to. I haven't actually tried this and I do not currently own a USB-to-serial adapter.
Anyway, you would stick one of these into your laptop and then connect a null modem cable from that to another computer that has a serial port. If your desktop computer doesn't have a serial port (WTF? I've never heard of that.), then you could do the same thing in reverse with another USB-to-serial adapter. Once you have the console redirected to serial, you could use a terminal emulator in connection with a screen reader to actually read that console output to you on the other computer at the other end of the cable. To be really good for you, this might however require a change in the installer: Maybe the "Change the default console to com0?" question could be moved "up" or duplicated, i.e. it would be asked very early on, pretty much as the first installer question, and there would take effect immediately, and maybe beep as well when asked. This would be a change to the installer (that I can't submit), but it oughtn't really take up that much additional space on the boot floppy. I admit this is idle speculation from an almost good-for-nothing hanger-on, but I thought I'd share these ideas; maybe they'll end up actually helping you. I know this would be relying on you retrofitting legacy tech (RS232), and I admit that the inclusion of full-on native screen reader and Braille terminal support in some installer USB stick might be easier for you, but in terms of the least effort overall to get something that works, the console redirection might be easier overall, since building and maintaining an all-singing, all-dancing USB stick installer with all that good stuff included (and vetted for vulnerabilities) would be a lot more additional work. Good luck! ropers On 7 July 2013 04:43, eric oyen <[email protected]> wrote: > what hardware? my laptop machine. also, its new enough that the only serial it > has is USB (which, as far as I know, doesn't support sserial redirection). I > also have a desktop machine and its new enough not to have any classic serial > ports either. so, no redirection there either. > and since there is no way for me to actually tell when it boots, getting to a > login prompt and then redirecting the screen output is not entirely possible > without someone sitting right there to tell me whats going on. > > This isn't anything like the old sparc pizza boxes where you could do this at > the outset and actually have it work the first time. > > anyway, thats the rub for me. I like the OS, but this is the show stopper for > me. > > -eric > > On Jul 6, 2013, at 5:49 PM, Alexander Hall wrote: > >>> >> >> Letting the installer redirect the console to com0 does not cut it? What > hardware are we talking about? >> >> /Alexander
