[lug] "No keyboard attached, press F1 to continue" need advice/help

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 09:20:27AM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote:
>Are there 'dongles' that plug into the
>keyboard socket on the computer and fudge the existence of a
>keyboard?

Yes, there are several ways you can go on that front.  There are
"keyboard emulators" that will plug into the keyboard and sometimes
mouse ports and they have ports that you can plug a real keyboard in.
This is great for machines that require the keyboard to boot, or which
have issues with having the keyboard unplugged.  They can be kind of
expensive, but I've gotten them cheap on ebay.

Some KVM switches also do keyboard emulation.  Cheaper ones do not.
Then there's the PC Weasel, which provides serial console access by
acting as a video card and connecting to your keyboard port, allowing
you to get full console access over serial.  Finally, the price of
KVM-over-IP has really come down, I think I've seen them in the $500
range now.  You can access the monitor/keyboard/mouse using VNC or
similar.

Sean
-- 
 Rocky: "I must be getting near-sighted!  You look all fuzzy..."
 Bullwinkle: "Let's face it, Rock...  I *AM* all fuzzy."
Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995.  Qmail, Python, SysAdmin