Quoted from their website:
"It's an 8-bit ISA board that emulates the original IBM MDA (Monochrome Display Adapter) character-based video board and the PC keyboard. Plugged into an 8-bit or 16-bit ISA slot, it takes the characters written by your CPU into its "video" memory and pumps them out its onboard RS-232 port. Characters input by you into the RS-232 port are converted into keyboard scan codes and presented to the motherboard's keyboard connector.
Whether you're using a dumb terminal next to your computer, dialing in via a modem connected to the PC Weasel's serial port, or on the other side of the world, connecting through an (async) terminal server, your machine will think it has a local keyboard and monitor."
www.realweasel.com
I bought mine for about $250. But I've yet to get it working. I will update this write-up when I get it working and time permits, Insha'Allah.
Several days later and I am
almost there. I needed to order a
null modem cable from
Black Box. Hooked it up to my
vt320, and set the communication settings. Plugged one side of the m/m
mini-din 6 into my mother board and the other side into my weasel. Booted up and got nothing but
garbage to the screen. Put in a
video card and went into my
bios. Set the video type from
VGA to
MONO, still garbage. Disconnected the cable and plugged in a standard keyboard and saw my boot messages on my vt320.
Input, I need Input!
It seems that if I have the keyboard output from the weasel plugged into the keyboard input of the motherboard on boot up, it
freaks all out on me. I tried booting
w/o the cable plugged in and everything went fine. I then tried plugging the cable in while the machine was booting, and I got my input. But I have to unplug the cable every time I want to
boot the machine. No problem really, since it's a server. Can anyone say "
job security".
Except for this slight problem everything went pretty well. The weasel and I are getting along quite well. I did try and contact the company that sold it to me about the problem, but got no response...twice.