From: "Ulrich Dangel" mru@grml.org To: grml@ml.grml.org
figure sound cards available at boot time. But why are you using an USB headset at all? Isn't it enough if you access the machine remotely via ssh/ipmi/ilo/…?
Well, it is possible that the NIC could be bad. I'm just trying to test everything. I don't have any servers that don't have serial ports so if one of my servers was down and I couldn't even get a network connection to it, I'd connect the hardware synth and use speakup. I also have a braille display so even if the machine didn't have a serial port, I could use braille. But I'm better equipped than most blind people. I shelled out $2000 of my own money for the synth and the braille display.
Off topic:I have this other pretty cool piece of equipment called a PC Weasel. Its essentially a PCI VGA card that takes character mode output and writes it to an on-board serial port. It looks like a VGA card to the host but it has a serial port for output instead of a VGA port. It really comes in handy when making bootable CDs. For instance, if I'm remastering the grml CD and it doesn't even get to the isolinux prompt, I can use this card and a null modem cable connected to a terminal emulator to see why.