Talking bios

[Janina Sajka]

Your router undoubtedly lacks the software needed to function as a
terminal.

As always in computing, hardware isn't enough. Some software must make
that hardware do the job intended.

The terminal that did the job in the olden days was a teletypewriter,
whence we get tty. You may have seen these in a museum. They had a
typewriter keyboard and a big fat roll of paper. Somebody far away could
make the machine type on that paper. And the person sitting at the
machine could type and make thousands of similar devices type the same
chars worldwide. This is how news was transmitted in the days before
sattelites. And, for the sake of news, there were tty devices that just
had the big fat rolls of paper and no keyboard for typing. They were,
ahem, dumb terminals.

So, to get back to your router, the serial port is for plugging a
terminal in. It's not for using your router as a terminal, because it
isn't equipped for that kind of thing.

Glenn Ervin at Home writes:
> From: "Glenn Ervin at Home" <GlennErvin at cableone.net>
> 
> I have a terminal port on my router.  It is a 9 pin serial.
> Would this work with such a BIOS, or not?  It seems to me that there would
> be no way for the BIOS to see the router at that point.
> Glenn.
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Jacob Schmude" <jschmude at adelphia.net>
> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 3:55 AM
> Subject: Re: Talking bios
> 
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Hi
> Well, strikes me that if you own any kind of terminal capable of
> communicating at 9600 baud you could take advantage of this sort of access.
> This includes
> second computers, laptops, other notetakers, and whatever else you may have.
> Perhaps it won't benefit everybody, but IMHO, a little access sure as hell
> beats
> the access we have now., and I'd say access such as this, if it ever was
> implemented on a PC bios, would be a damn good start to something long
> overdue.
> 
> On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 21:39:56 -0500, Allan Shaw wrote:
> 
> 
> >... but that's not what you indicated.  You indicated that you feel that by
> >connecting a Braille"n Speak to your system which allows you to access the
> >bios makes that bios perfectly accessible.  that's only one option, what if
> >you don't happen to own a braille'n speak?
> 
> 
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> 
> 
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-- 
	
Janina Sajka
Email: janina at rednote.net		
Phone: (202) 408-8175

Director, Technology Research and Development
American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
http://www.afb.org

Chair, Accessibility Work Group
Free Standards Group
http://accessibility.freestandards.org