big endian vs. little endian, why 1957

Yep- I have 8 Powerpc sbc's running the lab, console access is by rs232, 9600N81. The great thing about rs232 is its nice & simple, which is important when you don't have a whole OS up and running to support a usb port. Once the sbc's are booted & running, access is by network and the console port is more or less ignored.

And btw, the parallel port of the console monitor computer is also handy for individually resetting the sbc's- for each sbc, just take each bit off the port & drive a transistor that actuates a relay to close the reset contacts- cheap, easy and fast to put that together when you have a printer port available. I suppose a usb to parallel adaptor thingie would work- but having the printer port built in reduces the amount of crap that has to work right. It also means you can use any old computer hanging around in the lab- one of my racks uses an Sun Ultra 1 w8 port serial board, another rack has a junky Dell- the latter is flaking out after just a couple years and needs to go, the former has been working fine since dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Gregm