Turning Your Mac Into a Serial Console Server

chrisbw writes "Want to put that old VT100 terminal to use? Mac OS X Hits has a story on how to make a couple simple changes in OS X to enable login on a serial terminal (even over a USB serial adapter if you're on a newer mac). Cool trick for adding a text-based web surfing or email terminal in another room, or remote iTunes control!"

Comments

Not much point

[0x0d0a]

Yeah, at one time I got really excited about rigging up some cables to hook a VT220 up to my Linux box.

Problem is, there just isn't much point. Computers are *cheap* these days, and finding a used computer from the masses out there made in the last twenty years is easy. You can use any x86 box ever *made* as a good terminal emulator, and get color and other goodies the VT doesn't provide.

There are lots of terminal emulation programs, though if you have 4 MB of memory on the thing or more, I'd probably run Linux, which was originally a terminal emulator and still makes a darn good one. And if you just love the amber look of the VTs, you can theme your Linux terminal box using this relatively unknown program.

You also then get color, a nice big scrollback buffer, multiple virtual terminals per box. You don't have to hassle with weird cables -- a null modem cable is all it takes. You can put cast-off monitors of any size on the thing (and the move to LCDs is producing lots of excess CRTs...getting used 15 inchers for free is easy, and they're much nicer and larger than the VT100 screens, and don't have the annoying whine to them).

Re:Not much point

[DavidS]

I think you've missed the point entirely.
This also goes in with the story being mis-named. One of the nicer things about having serial console access to your machine is you have the ability to do things like if you were directly at the console... I don't think you're going to drop your system to single user mode while using the network. Or, if you're configureing something, and you accidentally mess up network connectivity, its a very nice backup. Also, on real hardware like suns, you can send serial breaks over the line, get into firmware, and do what is necessary, whether it be synching the machine due to crash, or whatever.

This story is also missnamed.. a serial console server is a server with a lot of serial ports on it :) (used to connect all your serial console machines togother)

Now, I'm not entirely sure what the use of a serial console is under osx, but the impression I'm getting is that its getting a bit more useful each revision of that OS. But under any other unix, not having a serial console in a production enviroment is just asking for trouble.

David

Re:Not much point

[cyb97]

And a bigger electricity bill, more noise and more heat...
VT-terminals (220s; not 100s!) are perfect for email terminals around the house, and excellent as a secondary (or more) screen for using BitchX/irssi... So instead of being limited to a dual-head setup... you can have as many heads as you want, some of them even with keyboards ;-)

Re:Not much point

[Trurl's Machine]

Right, but this is just another chink in the argument that "we can't let you work on a mac because we still need x86 to do "

Wouldn't the same trick work nice with some older serial equipped Macs (i.e. the 68k cuties)?

If you really want old school...

[bennomatic]

I know a company that still offers UUCP dial-up service if you want it badly enough...

I don't mean to be a troll here, but I have to agree with other posters that, beyond saying "I can do that", there are limited uses for this outside of a server environment. And in the server environment, Apple has the XServe, which, IIRC, has a serial console port built in.

But you gotta love that someone has done it, I guess.