[Gllug] Hardware giveaway!

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 04:15:42PM +0100, Peter Corlett wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 03:52:22PM +0100, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> [...]
> > Most x86 server rack mount units have proper serial consoles, even for the
> > bios. It is a shame that normal PCs don't do the same. I should have been
> > easy enough.
> 
> It's questionable whether it's "proper". What I've seen is something that
> basically tries to do a character-mode faithful emulation of poking around
> the BIOS menus, complete with VGA colours and character set. In practice, it
> speaks some weird VT100 variant that one's terminal emulator can't handle
> properly, so the display renders incorrectly and it's a pain to use. I also
> needed to plug in a keyboard and monitor to configure the BIOS to use a
> serial console, which rather misses the point.

Indeed ...

> A *proper* serial console acknowledges that it's the mechanism of last
> resort to get at the system, and makes it as simple as possible. Suns and
> PPC Macs have a very simple command-line interface to configure them, so any
> old terminal will suffice. (Of course, this assumes that your Mac is old
> enough to actually have a serial port.)

Don't forget FORTH support ...

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat
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